Random Acts of Journalism

Anyone who has read me for more than a few weeks knows how much this sucks for me. I’m not sure what to say about it just yet except for that i fear for the next generation of people who think Dane Cook is a comedic genius and will never hear Carlos Mencia question logic, authority and popular culture at every step. George Carlin was a friggin genius, one of the great thinkers of our time…and he used comedy as his medium in which to spread his thoughts. When you’re laughing at something, or in a good mood about it, it is always easier to accept an alternate point of view. So when he said that organized religion is bullshit or that rape could be funny or ripped on over-protective parents (”you want to do your kids a favor? Leave them the fuck alone!”) or that airline security is the dumbest thing ever…somehow it made sense, or at the very least, wasn’t as offensive as it should have been.  I have to give the man a large dose of credit for making me the thinker/critic/cynic/pain-in-the-ass/sarcastic asshole blogger that i am. He charged his audience to not accept the constant stream of bullshit fed to us by bureaucracy, government, media PR people and marketers and to think critically about what we believed and how those beliefs related to our actions. He is being mourned as a comedian, but he did a shitload more than make people laugh.

I don’t have many heroes…but Carlin was one of them. RIP Mr. Conductor.

Some other nice eulogies:
Kissing Suzy Kolber
Deadspin
USA Today
With Leather