The Republicans’ four-day Infomercial ended Thursday in Minnesota’s fraternal Twin Cities, and despite the fact no literal casualties were reported (although crews have yet to clear all of the balloons from ground zero), it is safe to say that politics will never be the same.
McCain shows off the largest of his seven homes, bragging his eighth, The White House, will be his biggest achievement of all
Regarding the latter allusion, I felt like the target audience inside the arena was upper middle class folks who have been duped by the powers that be that such a distinction exists and those prone to sporadic bouts of amnesia or Nationalistic-induced Tourette’s Syndrome outbursts:
“U.S.A…U.S.A…U.S.A…!” (shouted to drown out dissenters)
“Drill, baby, drill…! (chant for collective lobotomy to help end dependence on foreign thinking)
I realize the GOP wants the voting electorate to whitewash the past eight years in their minds, but I couldn’t help but feel I was watching an Amnesia Convention. Or was it a gun show? It seems I have forgotten.
Everyone, including McCain, knows that John SYDNEY McCain was a P.O.W. in the Vietnam War, and was shot down and tortured by his captors. But did every speaker need to remind us of this?
Everyone, including McCain, knows that former New York Mayor Rudy Guliani was on the ground during the Sept. 11 attacks, but just in case, the RNC displayed a video of the New York City skyline at sunset as it reflected off the harbor and Rudy’s receding skyline.
Before mocking Obama and community organizing, Rudy Giuliani read Allen Ginsberg's poem, "America," with the NYC sunset falling on the harbor in the backdrop
Romney used the platform to deliver his 2012 speech, filled with liberal bashing and an allusion to “Romeo & Juliet” with an attempt at poetry and the sun rising in the east. Somebody forgot to tell Romney that Romeo and Juliet die in the end of the play – not an optimistic outlook for the former Eastern Governor.
Most Effective Speech: President Bush
Although the party faithful oohed and ahhed over Palin’s speech, the most effective speech was the one not delivered, thanks to Hurricane Gustav. Not being seen with Bush trumps being seen with Palin in any hand, unless you are playing with Karl Rove’s loaded deck. Can’t wait for the next two months of 52-card pick up, now that the GOP has officially declared a Jihad on the MEDIA (sparing only the fair-and-balanced FOX News, so somebody will be left to tell the story to future neo-cons). Tsk, Tsk, GOP; I suggest giving Gary Hart his presidential playbook back.
Best Chant: “Four More Years…Four More Years…!”
Republican National Commercial Political Fallout Index:
Ratio of Protestors to GOP Delegates: 9 to 1
Ratio of Corporate Lobbyists to GOP Delegates: 17 to 1
Number of protesters arrested outside of convention center: 400
Number of Delegates who fell asleep during McCain’s speech: 400
Number of times speakers said “executive experience”: no total (abacas ran out of beads)
Number of times speakers talked about health care: 0
Number of times Republicans played P.O.W. card: no total (again, abacas ran out of beads)
McCain wants to reach out to every willing patriot and find peace and prosperity through Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Russia, and Alaska.
Enter Willing Patriot: “Come on down, you are the next contestant on the RNC’s ‘The Price is Right’”
Code Pink is in the House and she is pissed as she rushes the stage and appears to be shedding her clothes for America, unveiling a hot pink silk negligee that may have aroused Johnny Mac at one point in his life.
We take a moment to interrupt this live blog to introduce this Infomercials official buzz words:
EXECUTIVE EXPERIENCE!
Can you say executive experience? I knew you could, neighbor.
Sydney plays the Maverick Card.
Two mavericks minus one Cowboy and one Darth Vader = the end of the world as we know it.
Mac does a little Republican bashing, throwing in some Dems. D.C. bashing in the Twin Cities is contagious, folks. The bashing my friend is blowing in the wind… Nice homage to Minnesota’s very own, Bob Dylan.
Johnny Mac: Don’t legislate from the bench inspires crowd to rise from genuflecting stance and applause, nodding their heads, thinking that it’s better to legislate from the Oval Office, not the bench.
Look out those of you on the dole, Mac is going to send you packin’ to another country where you will be able to get your job back that put you on the government’s dime.
I wish the teleprompter wasn’t by the camera, I feel that the Maverick is looking right at me, right through me and the gateway to my soul: okay, I confess, Johnny, I’ve had sinful thoughts about Cindy.
Dear John, How will poor kids get to these other non-failing public and charter schools you speak of?
Can you say project? McCain just officially made it three syllables. If vouchers had only been around when he was a kid. He could have buggy-jacked a buggy and whipped his way to the nearest non-failing school down the unpaved highway.
Did they have public speaking in public schools back then? If so, I imagine Bam-Bam would have eventually improved his monosyllabic vocabulary.
Johnny’s not afraid of those Damn Ruskies. He know evil, especially Commie Evil.
Did you see how he handled that Code Pinko Commie sympathizer? Huh, did you? You want some of that Russia?
WTF: Sydney hates War? Who needs war when you can have surges and conflicts and the franchising of Democracy, eh?
I have the scars to prove it? Was Mac speaking metaphorically?
Interesting strategy: Bash Obama, then let’s bring it together and work together. Political Shock and Awe. This may just work.
Hat tip to GOD. You the Diety, God!
McCain admits service was all about him, not anything bigger than him?
Breaking News: John McCain was a P.O.W. during the Vietnam War.
Audience has inappropriately displayed USA flag and sign that says “John Mavrick.” Was that intentionally misspelled. How did that kid get by security? Clearly a byproduct of the NCLB movement.
McCain points out misspelled sign, "John Mavrick," and says "Hey, that's not how you spell Maverick. Maverick has two 'r's"
MSNBC apologizes for footage of Code Pink protestor, washing their hands of any responsibility, noting that the camerapersons are part of a consortium.
Stand up and fight ending sends GOP into writhing frenzy.
Recent history indicates that the Democrats have been successful at one thing: losing presidential elections.
As Americans face the prospects of never-ending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an economy that has tanked, the foreclosure crisis, health care costs still growing exponentially in relation to inflation, and myriad other indicators that spell out political D-O-O-M for the incumbent’s party, this year’s presidential election is the Democrat’s to lose.
But don’t underestimate the Democratic Party, which has been saddled with the historic curse of losing the presidency to George W. Bush not once, but twice.
When in doubt, leave it to the Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Besides handing over presidential elections, the only enterprise Democrats have been more successful at the past eight years is blaming everyone but themselves. They have cornered the market on political scapegoats.
In 2000, the poster boy for Al Gore’s failure was the Green Party candidate Ralph Nader, who has been demonized by party loyalists. Nader’s spoiler status spilled over into the 2004 election but was deemed less of a threat by the Democratic Party. Nonetheless, under the direction of Terry McAuliffe, who served as Hillary Clinton’s national campaign chairman during her failed presidential bid, the Democratic National Committee took no chances and tied Nader up in court and drained his resources with lawsuits challenging his ballot access in several states.
This doesn’t sound very democratic, now does it?
However, Nader’s reigning scapegoat status was challenged and inevitably pushed aside by the new scapegoat on the block: The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, who helped sabotage fellow Vietnam veteran Sen. John Kerry’s bid with its book, “Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry.” The 527 group managed to effectively smear Kerry’s name, thus supplanting Nader for the reason why he lost.
This week as the Democrats gather for the Democratic National Convention in Denver to coronate their new presidential nominee, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, a subtext is brooding underneath the unity narrative the Democrats are trying to spin as the general election revs into full gear.
Three words: Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Clinton, who was narrowly defeated by Obama in the Democratic primaries, has helped cultivate a loyal following, which is not ready to let go of their mentor’s monumental run that fell just short of victory a few months ago. Although Clinton has endorsed Obama, her most fervent supporters have yet to be won over by him. Moreover, some of these voters have vowed to vote for the presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain of Arizona. The most recent Zogby poll indicates that only 56 percent of Clinton-backers would vote for Obama, while 21 percent intend to vote for McCain.
The general election campaign is still young and there is time for some political wounds to heal, but to throw support from Hillary to McCain, who resides on the other end of the political spectrum, or I had assumed, doesn’t make a great deal of sense. I could understand harboring some differences with Obama regarding policy, but jumping on board with McCain suggests a few things.
For these voters, McCain’s ideology is more aligned with Clinton than Obama, which would point to a possible reason as to why the majority of Democratic voters didn’t vote for Clinton.
If these voters are upset and bitter about the outcomes and want to seek revenge against Obama, why not throw support behind third-party candidates such as Ralph Nader or the Green Party’s Cynthia McKinney?
Unlike the faulty logic of the past two elections, when Democrats’ power of persuasion was reduced to “A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush,” there is no logical breakdown with: “A vote for McCain is a vote for McCain.”
What remains unclear is what exactly the Clinton faithful want from the Obama campaign, or what will appease them, thus enticing them back to voting for their party’s nominee. Some of these Hillraisers feel that Obama’s campaign did not reach out to them enough or disrespected them through the campaign’s treatment of their candidate in the post-primary fallout.
Some were holding out for a possible vice presidential slot for Clinton, but these hopes were officially dashed at 3 a.m. Saturday, when Obama text-messaged his choice for VP: Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware.
Sixty-six percent of Clinton supporters -- registered Democrats who want Clinton as the nominee -- are now backing Obama. That's down from 75 percent in the end of June. Twenty-seven percent of them now say they'll support McCain, up from 16 percent in late June.
As the Democratic National Convention gets under way, it will be interesting to see how this subtext plays out as the Democratic Party attempts to build a unified front before taking on the Republicans in the final leg of the election.
Feeling disenfranchised by Obama and the DNC, one group, Political Unity My A.. (PUMA) refuses to give up the fight for Hillary. Although I’m not sure what they are still fighting for at this point, rather, it is what they are fighting against that appears to be behind their vow to make their voices heard at the convention.
The underlying threat that if their demands aren’t met, there will be hell to pay come November threads it way throughout the P.U.M.A. manifesto found on the group’s website:
But what our adversaries fail to realize is that it is not just we the people with PUMA affiliations that will make the difference in November.
It is all of us, all across this great country who feel disenfranchised, betrayed and hoodwinked by Obama and the DNC.
It is all of us who see through Obama’s persona.
It is all of us who believe that the measure of a man is his character. That people should be judged by the company they keep, the truths they live by and the lies they tell. Judged by whether they pander to the popular line, or take a hard stance, accepting the consequences of their actions and having the courage of their convictions.
Sensing the discord among the Clinton supporters who feel disenfranchised, the McCain campaign attempted to woo these voters by releasing some new ads after Obama picked Biden as his running mate.
McCain Ad: Clinton Supporters Can Come to Me
McCain’s ad, featuring former Clinton delegate and PUMA Debra Bartoshevich of Wisconsin, attempts to simultaneously woo Clinton supporters and appease any guilt about switching sides, but his ad may prove to backfire. The new poll numbers were already in his favor, not to mention, the Democrats were already lined up in a circular firing squad.
Exploiting Clinton and her supporters may only serve as the perfect opportunity to bring the two factions together and turn on the external enemy.
Either way, there’s a great deal at stake for Clinton’s future aspirations, should Obama lose in November. The Democrats will be out for blood and the Hillary Democrats who voted for McCain will offer a perfect target. However, they won’t blame Clinton’s supporters, because they’ll need a face to put on the scapegoat, and that is where Hillary Rodham Clinton comes in to play.
However, Clinton will be the headliner at the convention Tuesday, thus providing her an opportunity to assuage her supporters and convince them to get behind Obama, before she unleashes her delegates on Wednesday.
This will be the first step in the healing process, but the polls suggest Clinton may have more work cut out for her over the coming months. Granted, Clinton is not alone in this enterprise. Obama needs to reach out to these supporters as well and work to convince any undecided voters he should be the next president. But he can only throw the rope so far, and it may be up to Clinton to convince her loyal following to let go and move on.
For Clinton, the difference between them letting and not letting go may be the difference between her being a hero or a goat – a scapegoat that is.
While Obama wrapped up his World Tour and media love-fest, McCain’s campaign took time out from its County Fair Tour to issue some “Oh yeah, but…” statements to whomever would listen or had some dead-air to fill before deadline.
“In fact, [Obama's] never met with President Uribe in Colombia, as John McCain has,” McCain’s spokesman Tucker Bounds said on CNN today. “Obama has still yet to take a trip to Mexico City to have those meetings there and his relationship with Canada, I think, took a turbulent roll through the primaries.”
So na-na-na-boo-boo, Mr. Fancy Pants Obama.
When reporters pushed Bounds to elaborate, he added, “Oh yeah, and Obama has never been to heaven, hell, or Purgatory, Maine,” implying that McCain has vited all of these places.
Inspired by the battle of the Oh-the-Place-We-Will-Go Empty-Rhetoric War, the Political Fallout Fact-Check Team did some of its own digging into the past and unearthed, literally, some other places that John McCain has visited BUT Obama has NOT:
Atlantis (below): McCain reportedly visited the island before it sank below the sea. Reports indicate that McCain intended to inspect the island’s powerful naval academy to brush up on naval domination, but got sidetracked by his “Go Atlantis Guidebook.” McCain spent the majority of his goodwill trip to Atlantis snorkeling and looking for King Titan and his restless band of mermaids under the sea.
Hades: Upon returning from the underworld, seemingly unscathed by shades of the past, McCain promptly checked into the Betty Ford Clinic, where it’s reported that he underwent a fervent detoxication program to help flush sacrificial goats’ blood from his system.
Ithaca: Although Homer did not mention or footnote McCain’s visit to Ithaca and meeting with King Odysseus, McCain distinctly remembers having a cordial conversation with the King and his wife, Penelope. “I truly felt Odysseus’ pain after his 20 years away from home, 10 of which were lost in a grueling battle with the Trojans,” McCain told Political Fallout. “I felt like I really connected to Odysseus, especially when comparing my experiences as a prisoner-of-war and Odysseus’ seven-year captivity by Calypso. I can’t begin to imagine what Odysseus must have suffered at the hands of a beautiful goddess, whose only promise for being her boy-toy was immortality. The horror…the horror…”
Mesopotamia: During a 6th-century visit, upon the arrival of the Archaemenid Empire, McCain warned leaders that if they didn’t implement a surge of troops, Mesopotamia would lose its independence to foreign powers wanting to colonize their land. McCain’s prophecy, ignored by leaders at the time, came true with the arrival of the Islamic Caliphates, which paved the way for modern-day Iraq. Ignoring McCain’s 6th-century prophecy once again, Iraq fell to yet another takeover, which McCain has prophesized will last another 100 years.
Sodom & Gomorrah: After escaping the brimstone and firestorms of these cities, McCain’s only comment to the press was “What happens in Sodom and Gomorrah, stays in Sodom and Gomorrah.”
Not since the Muppets have we seen Pigs on Skates. Move over Miss Piggy, the Iowa Chops, the newest American Hockey League team, are coming to town.
Don’t worry, I’m sure that Iowans and the minor-league hockey community outside of Iowa, assuming such a thing even exists, will be hamming up the Chops new name with a plethora of pig puns and other piguendos.
The Iowa Chops, which is a farm team for the Anaheim Ducks (What the puck were they thinking when they named their franchise?), partnered with the Iowa Pork Producers Association and the co-owner Kirby Schlegel wanted a name that nobody else had (e.g. The Bitch-Slapstix).
"Something that got the community excited and most of all ties into Iowa,” Schlegal openly confessed to the Des Moines Register.
I don’t know about you, but nothing gets me more excited than pork; whether it be the film “Porkys” (which was the first R-rated movie I snuck into), traipsing in the meadow with my butterfly chop net, or hearing Mr. Pork Chop’s famous “Porrrrrrrrrrrrrrrk Chop” call while riding my bike on RAGBRAI.
Tragically, Mr. Pork Chop, who I assumed would be the poster boy for the Iowa Chops was ham hocked in the merger by a corporate logo. Das Pigs!!! Fearing a blitzkrieg of puns that would only serve up an affront to the Chop’s manliness and play on the insecurities of its players, the team was rebranded with a corporate logo that showcases a mean-looking boar’s head.
As Mr. Pork Chop gears up for RAGBRAI, fine tuning his pork-pink bus and warming up his chops to decry his famous pig call (see video below), I can’t help but think he feels slighted by the new Chops logo. (Note: RAGBRAI is famous for being the only week-long bike ride across a state, in which riders actually gain weight before plummeting into the Mississippi and floating downriver: Soueeeeeeeeuy!))
Mr. Pork Chop Serves Up a Taste of Pork Chop Fever
In the stuttering words of the most famous pigs of all, Porky Pig (why the redundancy here; this can’t be good for his self esteem, not to mention the all the pork spent on speech therapy), I leave you with:
When I think about Independence Day (the actual day celebrating the birth of our nation and not the movie, which I had managed to successfully repress until NOW), several American staples come to mind. These include the clichéd standbys such as baseball, apple pie, and last but not least, Canadian rock ’n’ roll.
You heard me loud and clear: Canadian rock ’n’ roll!
While North Americans have obsessed about our neighbors to the south crossing our borders in massive droves, we’ve turned a blind, albeit nostalgic eye to the north as Canadians cross the border and infiltrate our culture.
Such was the case on the eve of Independence Day when longtime Canadian rockers The Guess Who invaded Coralville’s 4thFEST and wooed more than 1,000 unsuspecting American citizens at S.T. Morrison Park.
Three generations of The Guess Who jam to "No Time." Pictured from left to right (1st to 3rd generation) are Derek Sharp, Laurie MacKenzie and co-founder- Jim Kale.
However, when you delve below the surface of their seemingly innocuous lyrics, as in the case of The Guess Who’s most famous hit, “American Woman,” you can’t help but feel the anti-American sentiments brewing and biting off the hand that fed the group its '70s fame.
American woman, said get away American woman, listen what I say Don’t come hangin’ around my door Don’t wanna see your face no moreI don’t need your war machines I don’t need your ghetto scenes Coloured lights can hypnotize Sparkle someone else’s eyesNow woman, get away from me American woman, mama let me be.
Metaphorically, it is clear that the “American woman” in the song is the United States and the narrator, Canada, is tempted by certain aspects of the American way of life but isn’t willing to accept the dark side of our capitalistic ways such as ghettos scenes and war machines. In light of these messages, the Coralville crowd adopted the Canadian anthem and was hypnotized by the song as they nodded their perfunctory heads and sang along as if reciting the “Star Spangled Banner.”
Despite the crowd’s complacency, front man and lead singer Derek Sharp (pictured left) took no chances and came out of the patriotic closet. Sharp, who has been touring with the band since April, joining after Carl Dixon was in a serious car accident, told the audience that he was celebrating his first Fourth of July as a citizen of the United States. He confided that he has been living in North Carolina for the past 17 years and recently received his U.S. citizenship. However, Sharp was reluctant to completely sever ties with his Canadian homeland.
“I’m still a citizen of Canada as well,” Sharp announced to the crowd, most of whom had no idea The Guess Who was Canadian bred in the first place. “Now I’m a citizen of the best two countries in the world!”
The Guess Who is not the only group to infiltrate our borders, but it is the first Canadian rock group to usurp the No. 1 slot on American charts, doing so in 1970 with “American Woman.” Before that, the band’s occupation in the United States was overshadowed by the British Invasion, which took root in 1964 when the Beatles landed in America. The Rolling Stones led the second wave of the British invasion 18 months later, followed by third wave spearheaded by The Who two years after that.
The British Invasion gave the The Guess Who more freedom to move about the U.S. and establish its roots without drawing notice from the watchful eyes of J. Edgar Hoover or the pop charts. Granted, the group traveled under its alias name, “Chad Allen & the Expressions,” until the group’s record company, Quality Records, attempted to create a mystique about the band by crediting its hit single to the “Guess Who.” The name stuck, and the group was outed in the U.S. and could no longer fly under Hoover’s ubiquitous radar.
The Guess Who, however, is by no means the most famous Canadian rock band to infiltrate our borders. That honor goes to “godfather of grunge” Neil Young, who crossed the border in the late '60s with his group Buffalo Springfield (two distinct American names, eh?). Uneasy about anti-Canadian sentiments, Young’s solo career took a detour with Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, thus placating American audiences before unleashing his barrage of anti-war and protest songs, most notably “Four Dead in Ohio,” “Alabama” and “Southern Man.”
The latter two songs did not go unnoticed by homegrown Southern rockers Lynrd Skynrd, who took offense to the Canadian rocker’s racial undertones and slight against the South: In Birmingham, they love the governor (boo boo boo) Now we all did what we could do Now Watergate does not bother me Does your conscience bother you?Tell the truth...
Lynrd Skynrd fired back with its Southern anthem “Sweet Home Alabama,” which not only expressed its regional pride but also took a jab at Young:
Well I heard mister Young sing about her [Alabama] Well, I heard ole Neil put her down Well, I hope Neil Young will remember A Southern man don't need him around anyhow
Since The Guess Who first invaded America in 1965, several other soloists and groups have followed and found success, including Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, 40 percent of Steppenwolf, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Rush, April Wine, Triumph and, lest we forget, Loverboy.
Forty-three years later, The Guess Who is still rocking and taking jobs that American bands don’t want, such as playing the 4thFEST in Coralville. However, only two of the five original members graced the stage to serve up some of the band’s greatest hits, blinding the baby-boomer audience into a nostalgic stupor.
(Note: The following footage was shot on location by non-union cameramen from Canada, who also were not legal citizens of the Unites Sates during the filming, thus explaining the Blair Witchian feel throughout the song.)
The Guess Who Invade Iowa (“No Sugar Tonight”)
Meanwhile, The Guess Who, among other Canadian musicians, are stealing jobs from hard-working white Americans, most of whom the pundits discovered supported Sen. Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential bid. Ironically, Clinton’s hands are less than bloody when it comes to insourcing Canadian musicians, when considering a plethora of washed-up American ‘70s bands or contemporary garage bands would have sufficed.
After all, it was Hillary who adopted Canadian diva Celine Dion’s song “You and I” as the official theme song of her campaign. To add insult to injury, the song had already been commissioned by Canada’s national airline, Air Canada. So not only did Clinton insource Canadian music, she helped outsource the Canadian airline’s marketing strategy through her campaign.
The Guess Who finished its 70-minute set, billed to the City of Coralville at a price tag of $35,000 (that’s 35,000 American dollars, folks, or $200/minute), with “These Eyes.”
…These eyes watched you bring My world to an endThis heart could not accept and pretend The hurtin's on me yeahBut I will never be free no no no You took a vow with me yeah You spoke it - you spoke it…
Similar to “American Woman,” I’m sure the “you” in the song is the U.S., and I for one guarantee that when The Guess Who returns to Iowa Aug. 23 in Davenport, these eyes of mine will be watching.
George Carlin did not pass away, expire, kick the bucket, nor did he leave this world for a better place
Plain and simple, folks: George Carlin is f*ck*ng dead, and no euphemism is going to change or conceal that fact.
Carlin reportedly died of “heart failure” Sunday night and had he lived long enough to read his own obituary, he probably would have had a heart attack.
"Why? Because words matter and people might assume that doctors were substituting "failure" for "attack," that they were concealing the truth and implying that Carlin's heart somehow let him down as opposed to the other way around. As he looks down upon us now, I’m convinced Carlin would say that it was only a matter of time before his heart would kill his ass for all the terrible sh*t he did to his body when he was still alive.
Carlin, undoubtedly one of the most influential stand-up comedians and satirists in American history, earned his notoriety by using words in his routines deemed vulgar or obscene. But Carlin argues there is no such thing as an obscene word, in and of itself; rather it’s the context of how and when the words are used that ultimately determine whether it is obscene or not.
Carlin addressed this notion in one of his famous comedy bits, which unleashed a verbal assault on the powers that be, who have hijacked the language to feed their own agenda and conceal America’s sins by masking the truth with words.
George Carlin on Language
Americans have always been afraid of the truth and Carlin reminds us that no matter how hard we want to sugarcoat the past, we cannot use words to hide our crimes. Nonetheless, our government, in cahoots with the media, has used euphemisms and double-speak to manipulate our language as a means of hiding unspeakable truths while simultaneously justifying and condoning its own atrocious behaviors.
Now some of you may be thinking to yourselves: “What’s this unpatriotic bastard talking about?”
(Speaking of context, all Americans are bastards -- given the fact our country is the bastard child of Mother England. And considering the American Revolution was an unpatriotic act of patriotism, aren’t we all descendants of unpatriotic bastards?)
Well, for starters, we have yet to completely face the hard truths about our role in committing systematic genocide against Native Americans, the enslavement of Africans and the World War II bombings of innocent people in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Dresden.
The list of obscenities goes on, but ironically, it was an abridged list of obscenities, “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” that landed Carlin in jail in a 1972 performance at the Milwaukee Summerfest. In the spirit of Lenny Bruce, Carlin was charged with violating obscenity laws. The case was dismissed five months later when the presiding judge declared that the language was indecent, but Carlin had the right to exercise his free speech, not to mention, the routine did not create any disturbance -- other than Carlin’s arrest.
The Seven Words You Cannot Say on Television:
However, a version of the original bit came under fire the following year during a radio broadcast of Carlin’s routine in New York. The radio station, WBAI, received a citation from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for broadcasting “obscene” material.
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the FCC action, by a vote of 5-4, ruling that the routine was "indecent but not obscene," and the FCC had authority to prohibit such broadcasts during hours when children were likely to be among the audience.
In its ruling the Supreme Court split semantical hairs, arguing there is a distinguishable difference between what is obscene and what is indecent, thus setting the precedent for years to come. The ruling transcended words in 2004, when Janet Jackson brandished her nipple during the Super Bowl halftime show. Because her nipple was indecent, and not obscene, Janet Jackson avoided arrest and detainment in Guantanamo Bay.
Ironically, news of Carlin’s death spawned a blitzkrieg of asterisks in the print media (see title), while broadcast interns across the country combed through over 40 years of material to find a clip of “decent” material to air on television.
Carlin picked up where Lenny Bruce’s untimely death left off and the question now is who will carry Carlin’s satiric torch into the future? Who will use humor and hyperbole to unmask and expose the awful truths in our society? Who has the balls to step into Carlin’s shoes and shine America’s dark side back in its face?
Arguably, some satirists, influenced by Carlin’s acid tongue, have already begun doing so. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are dominating the late-night scene with their faux news and critiques of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, Chris Rock, whom Rolling Stone magazine recently dubbed the “Funniest Motherf*cker in America,” is torching the stand-up circuit with his scathing satire of contemporary political and social issues.
Tragically, it appears Americans can only handle the truth in small doses and these doses have to be ensconced in humor and dispensed through biting satire. This appears to be the only way we can digest the truth.
Knowing this, Carlin not only used strong language to make sure that the truth was bitter while going down, but ensured that it burned while coming out the other end as well.
It is the latter that will keep Carlin’s words alive; I sh*t you not.
I, for one, know that I am going to miss that funny motherf*cker, and I will never forget George Carlin. That’s for damn sure.
Hades: Upon returning from the underworld, seemingly unscathed by shades of the past, McCain promptly checked into the Betty Ford Clinic, where it’s reported that he underwent a fervent detoxication program to help flush sacrificial goats’ blood from his system.
Three generations of The Guess Who jam to "No Time." Pictured from left to right (1st to 3rd generation) are Derek Sharp, Laurie MacKenzie and co-founder- Jim Kale.
