I first heard of George Carlin when I saw one of his specials on HBO when I was in 6th grade. I've never laughed harder. For all the people I never met who shaped my outlook on life, his influence easily carried the most weight. George Carlin loved words, and loved exposing the hypocrisy and pathos that lay beneath them in our culture and society. He probed their meaning, and skewered any and all attempts to soften, or lessen, the affects that real speech had on us.
He railed against phrases such as, "pre-boarding" ("to get on before you get on?"). He lamented as toilet paper became "bathroom tissue" and partly cloudy was now, "partly sunny." And, then seemingly much crasser, why handicapped people still weren't called "cripples." But, under that crassness there was truth behind his questions and tirades.
I was never more affected than his chronicle of the term "Shell-shock" to it's present-day form of "Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder." "Still eight syllables, folks...but we've added a hyphen!" He remarked that if we'd still been using "shell-shock" instead of watering the term down for our own psychological benefit, maybe those veterans would be receiving the treatment they actually deserved.
And of course, while he was most famous for his "7 Words You Can't Say On Television," but I also loved him for his outright silliness blended with his profanity - a juxtaposition of childlike and adult. This skit below, from that HBO Special I first saw, (Carlin on Campus, 1984), was my very first impression of him, and will stay with me forever:
Go well, George. Great work.
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