George Carlin Has Left The Stage

I am deeply saddened to hear that today, this country REALLY lost a Great Man.

George Carlin has died.

Many are called "great" these days. In this culture of sycophantic hero-worship, people throw the word "great" around so casually, it's become a distinction without a difference. But this man actually was great, if only because his first arrest came not when he did the now famous "Seven Dirty Words" bit - but years earlier, when he was at a club where Lenny Bruce was performing. When the cops arrested Lenny for unapologetically speaking his mind, George defended him, and got arrested as well.

He put his butt on the line for free speech from the very beginning.

I also think one way you can measure a man's life is by the number of important/insightful things he says, and nearly every word that came out of George Carlin's mouth was an utter treasure. Especially the dirty ones.

Carlin Onstage, by Henry Frew

This is my personal list of just SOME of his best. First, the short and oh, so sweet:

"Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck."

"Keep thy religion to thyself."

"I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately."

"When you're born, you get a ticket to the freak show. When you're born in America, you get a front row seat."

"Think of how stupid the average person is, then realize half of them are stupider than that."

"If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say that the universe aimed rather low, and settled for very little."

"The very existence of flamethrowers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, 'You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done.'"

"Why do croutons come in airtight packages? It's just stale bread to begin with."

"If a pig loses its voice, is it disgruntled?"

"Weather forecast for tonight: Dark. Continued dark overnight, with widely scattered light by morning."

"When cheese gets its picture taken, what does it say?"

"Here’s a bumper sticker I’d like to see: 'We are the proud parents of a child who’s self-esteem is sufficient that he doesn’t need us promoting his minor scholastic achievements on the back of our car.'"

“One can never know for sure what a deserted area looks like.”

"If it requires a uniform, it’s a worthless endeavor."

"Have you ever wondered why Republicans are so interested in encouraging people to volunteer in their communities? It’s because volunteers work for no pay. Republicans have been trying to get people to work for no pay for a long time."

"A house is just a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff."

"If crime fighters fight crime, and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?"

“Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things.”

"I put a dollar in a change machine. Nothing changed."

"You know the good part about all those executions in Texas? Fewer Texans."

"Conservatives want live babies, so they can grow up to be dead soldiers."

"The status quo sucks."

"If we could just find out who's in charge, we could kill him."

"Property is theft. Nobody 'owns' anything. When you die, it all stays here."

"Religion has convinced people that there’s an invisible man…living in the sky, who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn’t want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer and burn and scream until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you, and he needs money!"

"May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house."

"We don't need to 'save the planet.' The planet is fine. It's the people that are fucked."

"In America, anyone can become president. That’s the problem."

"There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls."

“I like it when a flower or a little tuft of grass grows through a crack in the concrete. It's so fuckin' heroic.”

And he could capture the essence of an issue that regrettably still impacts our world today:

"Sometime during my lifetime, 'toilet paper' became 'bathroom tissue'. 'Sneakers' became 'running shoes', 'information' became 'directory assistance', 'medicine' became 'medication', the 'dump' became the 'landfill', 'car crashes' became 'automobile accidents', 'partly cloudy' became 'partly sunny', and 'constipation' became 'occasional irregularity'. Poor people used to live in 'slums'. Now 'the economically disadvantaged occupy sub-standard housing in the inner cities.' And they're BROKE! They're BROKE! They don't have a 'negative cash-flow condition'..... They're BROKE! Usually because they were 'fired'. You know, 'fired' --- 'management wanted to curtail redundancies in the human resources area, so many people are no longer viable members of the work force....'

Smug, greedy, well-fed white people have invented a language to conceal their sins. It's as simple as that.

We have no more 'old people' in this country. They've all been deported and have been replaced by 'senior citizens'.

The CIA doesn't kill people anymore, they 'neutralize' them. Or they 'depopulate the area.'

The government doesn't 'lie', it engages in 'disinformation'.

Israeli murderers are called 'commandos'. Arab commandos are called 'terrorists'.

The Pentagon actually measures nuclear radiation in something called 'Sunshine Units!'

I don't like words that conceal reality. Americans have trouble facing the truth, so they invent this 'soft language' to protect themselves from it. And it gets worse with every generation.

There's a condition in combat, its when a soldier's nervous system has been stressed to its absolute peak and maximum. Can't take it any more. The nervous system has either snapped or is about to snap.

In the First World War, this condition was called 'Shell Shock'. Simple, honest, direct language. Just two words, almost sounds like the guns themselves. By the Second World War, the very same combat condition was called 'Battle Fatigue'. Four syllables now. Takes longer to say it, doesn't seem to hurt as much. 'Fatigue' is a nicer word than 'SHOCK'. By the 1950's, Madison Avenue was riding high, and during the Korean War, this same exact condition was called, 'Operational Exhaustion'. Hey, we're up to eight syllables now! And the humanity has been squeezed completely out of the phrase. It's totally sterile now. Sounds like something your car might get! Next comes Vietnam, and thanks to the lies and deceit surrounding that war, I guess it's no surprise that the very same condition was called 'Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder'. Still eight syllables, but we've added a hyphen! Now the pain is completely buried under jargon.

I'll bet ya, if we'd have still been calling it 'Shell Shock', some of those Vietnam Veterans might have gotten the help and attention they needed at the time!!"

And now we've reduced it to an acronym. Now, we don't even have the time to pay attention to the soldier's pain long enough to even say the whole word.

[Deep sigh.]

And like all good comedians, he could do both profane and profound:

"There are 400,000 words in the English language, and there are seven you can’t say on television. What a ratio that is! 399,993 to 7. They must really be baaaaaaad. They must be OUTRAGEOUS to be separated from a group that large! 'All of you words over here, you seven….baaaad words.' That’s what they told us, right...? You know the seven, don’t ya? That you can’t say on TV? Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits."

"The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness. We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things. We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less. These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete."

But of course, George said it best when he said:

"The tears happen. Endure, grieve, and move on. The only person, who is with us our entire life, is ourselves. Be ALIVE while you are alive. And always remember: Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."

Laugh today. Its the best tribute you could pay to him.

May you truly REST IN PEACE, George Carlin.

They Killed Them For a Stupid Speech: The Challenger Disaster and its Relationship to Failures of Leadership

I was just listening to a discussion on Coast-to-Coast AM about failures of leadership, and something was revealed about a seminal event that I lived through, and was deeply effected by, and yet knew nothing about.

I like many others, watched the Challenger Shuttle Disaster happen LIVE on the air. I was in High School at the time, living on a military base stationed overseas with my family. Because of the time difference, that meant that I watched the launch when I got home from school that afternoon.

Now in addition to being a real fan of the Space Program (I even met Apollo Astronaut Jim Irwin when I was a kid - he drove the land rover on the moon), my photography teacher was one of the finalists in the program to send an educator up on the Shuttle into space. In fact, she was there that fateful day, at Cape Canaveral, standing right next to Christa McAuliffe's parents, and she was literally the first one to tell them that what they were seeing was not how it was supposed to look -- that something had gone horribly wrong.

So I was very well aware of how the systems on the Shuttle worked, in fact, enough so to actually comment that same day, "What's that flame there - there by the EV? It's too high," long before the official explanation was given. As a young person full of hope for the future, I was absolutely heartbroken when the spacecraft exploded, and those heroes perished.

Well it seems that Marc Gerstein & Michael Ellsberg (son of the man who released the Pentagon Papers) have written a new book called "Flirting With Disaster: Why Accidents are Rarely Accidental" on leadership, whistleblowers, the concealment of risk, and why organizations fail to tell the truth even to themselves. Apparently, among the many case studies they confront in the book, they discuss the Challenger Disaster.

They've found out that the reason why they launched the Shuttle on THAT PARTICULAR DAY, was because Ronald Reagan wanted to talk with the astronauts live, during his State of the Union speech.

Now that particular day happened to be the coldest that they had ever launched on. Normally, because of all the problems that accompany icing anyways, they would have postponed the launch until things warmed up a bit. And the engineers had previously expressed concerns about why the O-rings were behaving as they were in other launches. But if they hadn't launched THAT DAY, the Republicans wouldn't have been able to USE those HUMANS onboard for their precious photo-op.

So NASA, who's budget had already been cut by those same Republicans to just 1/3rd of what it was during the Apollo days, had to deal with that reality, along with all the normal pressures, plus the additional ones surrounding having the first civilian aboard, and now there there were pressures from the White House to launch - in spite of the cold - for fear that if they didn't, even MORE of their budget would be cut.

To put it in the simplest terms, THE REPUBLICANS KILLED THOSE PEOPLE FOR A STUPID SPEECH.

And Administrators at NASA, our of fear (justified though it may have been) let them.

Now I was upset about that incident already. My own teacher came a breath away from actually being ON that flight, but the idea that they pulled that crap, and then stood around acting like they had no role in the accident, that they were sympathetic and caring, that they hugged the families who's sons and daughters THEY'D JUST HELPED KILL, just angers me in a way I can't even fathom.

I was angry during the Reagan years for a lot of reasons. For my generation, it was the first exposure we'd gotten to Republican corruption (I was too young to have experienced Nixon), and everything from Iran-Contra, to the unwillingness to divest from South Africa during Apartheid, to the useless Star Wars program, to the dumping of a million mentally ill people onto the streets.... I mean it goes on, and on, and on.... all that offended my sense of justice enough. But things have been - mindbogglingly - so much WORSE under the latest Republican Administration, that'd I'd forgotten (to a certain degree) how much the Reagan era pissed me off.

It just seemed to pale in comparison (and in many ways it does, because the lying and corruption is so blatant now).

Well I just got a reminder that those people were similarly callous and careless with human life (unless of course, that "life" was a fetus).

And I don't want that FACT forgotten.

There's a lot of weird, mindless hero-worship about the Reagan Era, thanks to aggressive revisionist history advanced by the Republicans and their whorish sychophants in the corporate media, but I don't want AVERAGE people to be fooled by that nonsense.

The terrible things you see today, are actually NOT aberrations. They are SYSTEMIC problems.

They are the NATURAL result of the power systems we have set up, and the short-term thinking we engage in, that INTENTIONALLY silences truth.

Much has been made about the Chimp-in-Chief's latest example of this, in his "look at the sock stuffed in my codpiece I'm such a big man" speech on an aircraft carrier. That was less immediate and direct than the Reagan State of the Union/Challenger incident, but for all intensive purposes, it was the same thing.

People had to die in a war to make some jerk in the Oval Office look good.

So I want to encourage everyone to read Gerstein & Ellsberg's book. It confronts many incidents (the Bophal chemical disaster, Sibel Edmonds, Enron, the Stanford Experiment & Abu Ghraib, Chernobyl, Katrina, and a bunch of others) and how these large-scale disasters happen, why truth-tellers are not only ignored, but actively punished for that truth-telling, how those we've called our leaders are willing to engage in great risks with OTHER people's lives, and to silence those who reveal those risks. Such actions ultimately weaken us all, and can only be combated, if we face the reality of them.

We have a problem with leadership that while it has often manifested in this country among Republicans to the most extreme degree, it extends far beyond them. Our business life is deeply affected by the lack of good leadership skills, of ETHICAL BEHAVIOR (not moral behavior, I'm talking about standards of conduct independent of any particular religious dogma), standards of honor and compassion, and SIMPLE HONESTY, and respect for others who ARE honest. The press itself doesn't not confront this issue, because they too have been corrupted by the same lack of an ethical center, and an unwillingness to care for the interests of the little guy.

Though mileage may vary regarding whether you liked the actual movie or not, there was an important line in "The Da Vinci Code" that applies here. The character of the French woman thought to be the descendant of Jesus Christ says in passing, "We are who we protect."

One reason why ethical behavior is so lacking, is that we fail to ask the right questions of ourselves.

Who am I protecting with this action (or lack thereof)? The powerful? The wealthy? The status quo? The bottom line at the expense of ordinary people? My own skin?

Or am I protecting those who cannot defend themselves? Those who might be unaware of a problem, yet endangered by it? Those who are young or elderly? Those who are poor?

WHO DO YOU PROTECT?

WHAT DO YOU PROTECT?

The Rule of Law? The rights of everyone to equal treatment? Fairness itself? The environment that sustains all life? Logic? Honor? People, or property?

And while beginning to ask these questions is critical, of more importance is knowing how to ANSWER THEM in a way that helps both individuals, and the society at large.