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Carlin's legacy was his breaking of barriers

BY VERNE GAY | verne.gay@newsday.com

10:01 PM EDT, June 23, 2008

"Always do whatever's next," George Carlin, who died Sunday at 71, once famously said. He did, and the rest of the culture followed.

Forget those seven words, which you still mostly won't hear on commercial TV. Carlin's influence was of the sort that went beyond mere obscenity and mere television as well. It was a language-busting, barrier-breaking influence that soared past TV and strafed popular culture at large (before rebounding, naturally, back to TV).

Today, Carlin's impact is spread wide, from "The Simpsons" to "South Park," from "Saturday Night Live," which he helped launch 33 years ago, to "Family Guy" and just about everything Judd Apatow ("Knocked Up") does.

Tributes to Carlin began pouring in Monday, reflecting the breadth of that impact. "His fearlessness and ability to challenge audiences to rethink the world around them and question the status quo was unparalleled and led the way for a generation of comedians that followed," said a statement from Comedy Central. "George Carlin was a pioneer who continued to be vital and relevant till the day he died," said Sarah Silverman, one of many Carlin acolytes.

George Denis Patrick Carlin was born in 1937 in New York City, was a high school dropout (the Bronx's Cardinal Hayes) and an Air Force enlistee who flopped at that as well. Stationed in Louisiana, he worked the coffee house circuit in nearby Texas with his comedy partner, Jack Burns, then spent the '60s perfecting his mainstream act on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson," where he appeared no fewer than 130 times.

The break with the '60s, along with his tie and neatly trimmed hair, was dramatic. "Class Clown," released Sept. 29, 1972, became not just one of the best-selling comedy albums in history but included a riff on seven words you couldn't say on TV; "400,000 words in English," he mused, "and seven you can't use on TV. ... They must be really BAD."

In October 1973, when New York radio station WBAI played a cut from the same routine on the followup album "Occupation Foole," the FCC sought to fine it, and the Supreme Court upheld the ruling, which later led to broadly defined if unenforceable creations such as the "family television hour."

Meanwhile, an entire generation of TV writers -- who would go on to create the television and movies we watch to this day -- absorbed "Class Clown" and other ground-breaking albums through each and every pore. While it kept the seven words off the air, the FCC couldn't prevent the deluge to follow -- a coarsening of prime time TV with words and actions that were euphemisms for the ones Carlin could never say.

In an interview two years ago with New York-based journalist T.J. English, Carlin said his "words" act "summed up a lot of what I'd been grappling with in the mainstream television world of variety shows and internal censorship."

But it also overshadowed a rich and often brilliant career, enshrined in dozens of albums and HBO specials -- yes, filled with scatology and singular insight as well. "By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth," he once observed. Or, famously, this: "If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little."

"This is as significant a loss as if Bob Dylan passed away," said English, who was developing an authorized biography at Carlin's death. "We can argue about Richard Pryor's brilliance and who had the most significant impact, but I don't think you can argue about the scope of Carlin's career.

"When he made this gestalt break from his former self -- I think he actually came out on a Tony Orlando show with a cardboard cut-out of the old George with [short hair] and said, 'this is the guy I used to be and this is the guy I am now,' it was extraordinary. I could feel the generational shift take place right at that moment."

Carlin recently told The Associated Press that "I was doing superficial comedy, entertaining people who didn't really care: businessmen, people in nightclubs, conservative people. It finally dawned on me that I was in the wrong place doing the wrong things for the wrong people."