GEORGE CARLIN
(May 12, 1937-June 22, 2008)
By Bill Maher
Before Carlin came along in the late '60s, comedy was the ''Take my wife — please!'' kind of comedy. Carlin was one of the guys who said, No, we're going to take comedy out of the Catskills and we're going to make it urban-based. We're going to make it hip. We're going to make it something that you don't necessarily want to listen to with your kids.
I don't know any comedian who doesn't look up to him. Not every comedian works in the same kind of vein that he did. There are comedians who are nothing like him. But I would be hard-pressed to find one who doesn't admire him.
He was the only person I ever heard who talked about religion in the way that I thought about religion. Comedians have always made jokes about religion, but they weren't subversive. But he said that religion was stupid and dangerous. And that was very powerful to me, that someone could say that publicly.
A lot of people still aren't willing to accept his brand of comedy. The proof to me was this year, when he was up for an Emmy for his comedy special [George Carlin: It's Bad for Ya]. There's a law in show business: If you die, you get the award. But they gave it to Don Rickles. And that just made me love [Carlin] even more. Even in death, this guy is too out-there for the squares.
Carlin, 71, died of heart failure in Santa Monica.
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