I grew up listening to George Carlin’s FM & AM album and, in the process, I learned a lot about language.
Carlin — who along with Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, Mort Sahl and a few others — stands above the stand-up business the way the 1927 Yankees stand above other baseball teams. He was inventive, pointed and versatile — and he was one of the most incisive social critics of his generation.
The series of bits he did on profanity — “Shoot,” “The Seven Dirty Words” — took the harsh language of the street and the bland euphemisms we’ve concocted to replace them and twisted them in such a way as to expose our own hypocritical self-censorship.
I won’t repeat the language — this blog is tied to a family newspaper, after all — but how is it any less crass to substitute “shoot,” “horse hockey” (remember Col. Potter on “M*A*S*H) or “frig” and “Fug” (this one is Norman Mailer’s early contribution) than to use the expletives in their full and unvarnished glory?
He broke open the oxymorons that we live by (from the first Saturday Night Live):
The term Jumbo Shrimp has always amazed me. What is a Jumbo Shrimp? I mean, it’s like Military Intelligence – the words don’t go together, man.
RIP, Mr. Carlin.
Hank Kalet 