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Clips: 7 Moments of George Carlin Greatness

George Carlin was completely unique in that he was the only counter-cultural comedian who was consistently funny and human - and he did it for some forty years. The early underground comics were angry misanthropes like Lenny Bruce, who started an anti-comedy tradition which continues to this day, which was to pander to a niche audience by saying something like "The President is a dumb fuck", which would automatically provoke laughter and applause from the hip set. Mission accomplished - without ever taking the time to write any real comedy material. The sharpest transgressive comic of the seventies, Michael O'Donoghue, was brilliantly, shockingly funny, an absolute genius, but totally lacking in humanity.

Carlin was different. He had a curious mind, a natural gift for comedy, and a gentle warmth. He was a guy who could have gotten (and did get) laughs doing any kind of comedy from nonsense to wry to satire, but chose to concentrate on his passions. I notice that he was scheduled to receive the Mark Twain Award later this year. I can't think of any tribute more appropriate. Twain and Carlin were both iconoclastic yet humane, profane yet wise, champions of humanity, and lovers of the quirks of the English language. The two men were so similar in so many ways that Carlin truly was the Mark Twain of our era.