1 post tagged “"seven dirty words"”

One of the greats passed yesterday. George Carlin left for that great stage in the sky on Sunday evening and shall be sorely missed. His style of humor was not for everyone, but I believe he tried to offend everyone and mostly succeeded at one time or another. The offensiveness was not (to my knowledge) malicious. Rather, Carlin used his remarkable gift of language to craft a mirror that highlighted our imperfections, usually in a grossly exaggerated way. As Paul noted in one of his epistles to the Corinthians (and I'm too lazy to look up which one), "we see through a glass, darkly". In this usage, we see only a distorted reflection (a "glass" is a mirror, not a lens) and George magnified those distortions in a way that both entertained and allowed us to to see more clearly if we dared to look deeply enough.

There will undoubtedly be many tributes to George over the coming days and weeks. Some will speak to his comedy or to his political or social philosophy and that's fine. He was great in so many ways that it would take a few biographies to capture him fully and a few minutes' tribute can do no more than scratch the surface. But above all else, I think that George was a teacher. And he taught the power of words. Words do have power, but the idea that seems to underlie most of George's work is that words can only have the power you let them have.

There are words and there are ideas. We, as a society or culture, decide that there are certain words that are not to be publicly used and certain ideas that should not be publicly discussed. The question, though, is whether it is the word or the idea behind that word that don't want. Once a word is removed from the realm of public discourse, it has been given power that no word should have because it expresses something forbidden. Even more frightening is the thought that by removing a word from the realm of discource, we might also remove the idea. For can an idea exist if there are no words to express it? And if it's acceptible to talk about the idea, why worry about the word since it's just the container into which the idea is crammed.

So, for those thinkers out there, which words should never be uttered and what is so repugnant that it requires such censorship? And for George: thanks for all the shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits. You taught much, though I'll never know if that was your true intent.