Getting old sucks, but if George Carlin can reach 70 and still be convincingly angry at least my potential for a few more good years is looking better.

I last saw George Carlin at a club in New York a full life-time ago. I don’t even remember when it was and i only understood portions of the show. I remember his energy, his anger, his clear belief in what he was saying and his earnestness. When he railed against ignorance, complacency and hypocrisy it was more than obvious he wasn’t doing this for laughs he was doing it to persuade people.

It’s safe to say i agree with everything Mr. Carlin covered last night. And it was encouraging that the Morrison Center was nigh full. As far as i could tell from where i was sitting (4th row center) only a couple of people left during the show.

Last night reminded me that while language might be “a virus from outer space,” it is also sacred. Words create magic from squishy nothingness just like Rodin created magnificence from stone. And here’s the key: what was covered in Mr. Carlin’s monologue didn’t make me feel better about myself, it made me feel worse about everybody else and the condition of the world. But two things i have to mention: first is his bit about the unbelievably ubiquitous sticker “proud to be an american.” I completely agree with his question “what the fuck does that mean?” I’ve always wanted a sticker reading “unsure what it means to be an american.” But his point about “pride” was well founded. Pride is something you feel due to something you achieve not something handed to you as an accident of birth. You can be happy about living in a country where there is still a semblance of law, but “pride” is a misnomer.

Likewise his comments about “rights” is well taken. This is actually an evergreen on the politically-minded standup circuit, but Carlin does it well. The whole idea that we have “rights” as spelled out in the Bill of Rights is another in a series of American myths. Carlin correctly points out that other countries have very different numbers of rights spelled out in their constitutions and then asks “where do rights come from?” If they come from god why is there disagreement in the number of rights? He goes round and round on this but arrives at the conclusion that what these documents spell out is not a list of rights but a list of privileges. Rights, he points out, cannot be taken away, privileges can come and go with the whims of whatever group finds itself in power at any given moment. Given the decay of “rights” under the Bush administration it becomes self-evident that the bill of rights is actually talking about privileges.