AVC: Just like you changed your comic style in the late '60s and early '70s, some have contended that you changed again in the '80s, becoming a little bit angrier. Would you agree with that?
GC: No, it's not so much anger. People read it that way, and that's the convenient word to go to. I understand that. Here's why it seems that way. There is a certain amount of righteous indignation I hold for this culture, because to get back to the real root of it, to get broader about it, my opinion that is my species—and my culture in America specifically—have let me down and betrayed me. I think this species had great, great promise, with this great upper brain that we have, and I think we squandered it on God and Mammon. And I think this culture of ours has such promise, with the promise of real, true freedom, and then everyone has been shackled by ownership and possessions and acquisition and status and power.
And perhaps it's just a human weakness and an inevitable human story that these things happen. But there's disillusionment and some discontent in me about it. I don't consider myself a cynic. I think of myself as a skeptic and a realist. But I understand the word "cynic" has more than one meaning, and I see how I could be seen as cynical. "George, you're cynical." Well, you know, they say if you scratch a cynic you find a disappointed idealist. And perhaps the flame still flickers a little, you know?
And so, there's a part of me that is angry. Not in the sense of, "Gee, George is an angry guy!" I mean, anyone who's been with me five minutes, five years, whatever, they would tell you they've rarely seen me in a moment of anger. Yes, I can become highly irritated in a line that's moving slowly, or with a clerk who's incompetent. But I don't yell. I don't get rude. I am clear about what I expect. In a store, my mother always told me, "Ask for the manager immediately. It changes the tone of the conversation." [Laughs.]
So I am not a difficult man by any stretch, and I'm saying that with a full and honest inventory going on. I'm not. And I'm not angry on stage. There is a heightening. There is an intensification of the feelings on stage in order to let them carry the room. There is a theatricality about it. The whole thing is oratory, so there's persuasion involved. There's the art of rhetoric involved. And so, with hyperbole and with the desire to really punch the thing home, some of it reads a little more angry.
Now, it's true that the direction of the material changed, at least in part. Because I had always featured language stuff that was fairly simple and innocent and honest and even sweet and childlike, and other things like, "Oh, did you ever notice between your toes, you have these things." I still did all that stuff. But I began to tap into that other part of me that would've been a great protest singer. I just began to let that part of me grow and live. It was a natural thing, and it just went from one level to another. And there's a lot of that social criticism in the shows now, because what I'm really trying to say to people is, "Don't you see what the fuck you're doing here? What you've done to yourselves? Can't you see what you're letting them do to you?" I mean, that's sort of the subtext. "Aren't you aware of what the fuck is going on, you folks?" That's kind of what I'm thinking in my heart.
AVC: The material doesn't seem to favor any particular political side. It's not overtly leftist, and it's certainly not overtly right.
GC: Yeah, you know, actually, if you dropped me off a space platform onto the ground where a line was drawn, I would fall to the left side of it. I believe the difference between right and left is that the right, for the most part, the bulk of their philosophy is interested in property, and the rights of people to own property and gain and acquire and keep property. And I think on the left—though they blend and mix—on the left primarily you will find people who are more concerned about humans, and the human condition, and what can be done. And if I had any choice to make, I think I would always be on the side of, "Gee, can't we figure something out?"
Let's suppose we all just materialized on Earth and there was a bunch of potatoes on the ground, okay? There's just six of us. Only six humans. We come into a clearing and there's potatoes on the ground. Now, my instinct would be, let's everybody get some potatoes. "Everybody got a potato? Joey didn't get a potato! He's small, he can't hold as many potatoes. Give Joey some of your potatoes." "No, these are my potatoes!" That's the Republicans. "I collected more of them, I got a bigger pile of potatoes, they're mine. If you want some of them, you're going to have to give me something." "But look at Joey, he's only got a couple, they won't last two days." That's the fuckin' difference! And I'm more inclined to want to share and even out.
I understand the marketplace, but government is supposed to be here to redress the inequities of the marketplace. That's one of its functions. Not just to protect the nation, secure our security and all that shit. And not just to take care of great problems that are trans-state problems, that are national, but also to make sure that the inequalities of the marketplace are redressed by the acts of government. That's what welfare was about. There are people who really just don't have the tools, for whatever reason. Yes, there are lazy people. Yes, there are slackers. Yes, there's all of that. But there are also people who can't cut it, for any given reason, whether it's racism, or an educational opportunity, or poverty, or a fuckin' horrible home life, or a history of a horrible family life going back three generations, or whatever it is. They're crippled and they can't make it, and they deserve to rest at the commonweal. That's where my fuckin' passion lies.
But I'd rather give up on the whole thing. [Laughs.] Because I'm not going to be here to see it play out. I just kind of like talkin' about it.
AVC: Does it irritate you then to see all these e-mails floating around with your name on them, like the recent one about the Katrina victims, which attributes a bunch of callous anti-poor jokes to you?
GC: Yeah, the "Sittin' On My Butt In New Orleans" e-mail. I don't understand why a person would want to do that, unless they were thinking, "Let's embarrass George," or "Let's try to give George a bad name," or something. Here's what I want people to know, and if I did nothing else in this interview, I'll get this across: If anyone e-mails you something "by George Carlin," there's a 99 percent chance I did not write it. I didn't write "Paradox Of Our Time." I didn't write "George Carlin On Aging." I didn't write a eulogy for my wife after she died. I didn't write the New Orleans thing. I didn't write "I Am A Bad American." None of them.
You know what I've decided to do? I'm going to get a little cheap put-it-together-yourself website called NotMe.com. I haven't done this yet, so anyone who goes there won't find anything... and somebody will probably just steal the domain name now. [Laughs.] NotMe.com. What I'm going to do is mass-mail everybody on my e-mail list—all those people who know me and like me—and get them to mass-mail everybody on their list. I'm going to create a pyramid, Ponzi kind of a fuckin' scheme, completely blanketing the world by the multiplicity of people's mass mailing lists, with a little descriptive paragraph, nothing too long, just a little descriptive paragraph from me, telling them I did not write these things, and saying "Go to this website." I think that's the way to have a little fun and combat that.
AVC: What's bothersome about the Katrina and "I Am A Bad American" e-mails is that they sound kind of bullying, which raises a tricky question: Do you think it's possible to be truly funny from a position of power? For instance, Dennis Miller, who's always been a smart, funny comedian, has undergone a political conversion over the past decade, and now his comedy is rooted in his support of the Bush administration. And he seems less funny.
GC: For some reason, there aren't as many right-wing comedians as there are left or center or non-political. I read something about this recently that made sense, and I've forgotten what it said, of course. I have great respect for Dennis Miller's mind and ability as a comedian, but I agree that I am not as personally entertained his new material, which you describe as "coming from a position of power." Of course, he always did come from a position of presumed superiority, and I don't necessarily say that pejoratively. He did come from what appeared to be a smartass, superior platform. That's part of what made him work, as a stand-up.
I think your premise is correct, that it's harder to be funny from the position of power. That's a good description for it. Might be a couple other ways of describing it that I can't think of.
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