George Carlin's American Dream

And speeding.

Hmm.

Okay. I know how to start-- I want to start this.

- We're rolling. - Uh-- Oh, rolling.

Yes.

Let's get in.

- Okay. - You're good?

Yep.

One more time. And action.

Here's another civic superstition

I have a problem with. "Rights."

Boy, everybody in this country is always running around

yammering about their rights.

"I have a right." "You have no right."

"We have a right." "They don't have a right."

"The government has a right." Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Fine.

Listen, folks, I hate to spoil your fun,

but there's no such thing as rights, okay?

We made them up.

They're imaginary, like the boogeyman,

the three little pigs, Pinocchio, stuff like that.

It's fictional. Fictional idea, rights.

People say, "Well, they come from God.

They're God-given rights." Oh, fuck, here we go again.

The God excuse,

the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument.

"It came from God."

But let's say it's true.

Let's say it's true that God gave us these rights.

Fine, why would he give us a certain number of rights?

The Bill of Rights in this country

has ten stipulations, ten rights. And by the way,

God must have been doing sloppy work

'cause we've had to amend the Bill of Rights

an additional 17 times.

God left out a few things, like...

slavery. Just fucking overlooked it that day.

Doesn't sound like divine planning to me.

Sounds more like one group trying to control another group.

In other words, business as usual in the USA.

Here's George Carlin.

Legendary comedian George Carlin.

- George Carlin. - Hey, baby, what's happening?

By far, you're easily

one of the greatest comedians ever.

All I could think of was shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker,

motherfucker, and tits, man.

Carlin changed comedy

three or four times in his career.

And he still seems to be talking to us.

Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with a fetus

from conception to nine months,

but once you're born, you're on your own.

Because George Carlin bits

are still being shared on social media

"to go,"You don't understand how rights work?

Look at this bit."

"You don't understand how privilege works? Look at this bit."

This country's only 200 years old

and already we've had ten major wars.

So we're good at it!

And it's a good thing we are.

We're not very good at anything else anymore.

Got no steel industry left, can't educate our young people,

can't get health care to our old people,

but we can bomb the shit out of your country, all right.

Comedy, traditionally, has picked on people in power,

people who abuse their power.

I don't like orthodoxy of the left

any more than I like orthodoxy of the right.

I don't like anyone trying to control

the language and behavior of people.

These moral commandos who want us

to think their way

and want to change what we can hear and see

and think in this country are dangerous.

It's called freedom of choice,

and it's one of the principles this country was founded upon.

Look it up in the library, Reverend,

if you have any of them left

when you finish burning all the books.

It's a big club, and you ain't in it.

People will say to me sometimes,

"Well, what are you so angry about?"

Has everybody lost their fucking mind

in this country?

What they think is anger

is a real contempt for the choices

that my fellow humans have made.

I just feel betrayed

by the bullshit in America that's all around us.

I call it the freak show.

When you're born into this world, you're given

a ticket to the freak show.

When you are born in America, you're given a front-row seat.

So, fasten your seat belts,

ladies and gentlemen, get ready for Mr. George Carlin.

There are thousands of comedians in this country,

but basically, only two types of humor.

There's the old school and the new school.

I think we recognize them both.

The old school is largely made up

of the fast-paced stand-up comedians,

the one-liner comics

who came from vaudeville and burlesque,

and they comprise the insult school of humor.

Jack E. Leonard is a good example of this.

"Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen."

I'd just like to say it's good

to be back in New York this weekend.

It's a wonderful town. Thank you very much.

You got some lovely girls here

compared to the last place I worked.

Some of the broads there were so ugly

that if you wanted to pay 'em a compliment

you had to say, "How do you do? I see your face cleared up."

I began with this very mainstream dream.

Fifth grade, 11 years old,

the autobiography, the last page,

"What do you want to be," said,

"disc jockey, comedian, actor, big success."

I didn't know what this would lead to.

I only knew that I loved standing up in front of people

and having their attention.

I grew up in New York. Whenever I'm back in town

I like to visit nostalgic places from my childhood.

I was from a neighborhood, we called it White Harlem.

It was right next to Harlem and Columbia University.

We called it White Harlem

because that sounded bad, you know?

The real name was Morningside Heights.

We had Columbia University and Juilliard and two seminaries

- right near us. - Wow!

I grew up with a great respect

for knowledge and love of it, you know, just thirst for it.

The neighborhood is very mixed.

Right next to the Spanish and the Black ghetto,

Harlem, and the lower-middle-class

Irish neighborhood where I grew up.

This was the way the guys in my neighborhood talked.

This here is your third-generation Irish voice.

All the cops in New York have this voice, right?

You heard the voice. "Come on, Johnny, move along here.

Come on, let's go. Where you going, Johnny?"

They call everyone Johnny. Notice that?

Even your mother, right? "I'm his mother."

"Never mind, Johnny, get off the corner there."

My father, whom I didn't know,

was gifted verbally.

He was a natural comedian

with a line of shit that wouldn't quit.

He was an after-dinner speaker.

He won the Dale Carnegie speakers contest,

over 600 and something other entrants.

My mother could tell stories. They both did character voices

when they would tell you an anecdote,

so it was in the genes and it was around the house.

And neither of them took any shit from the world.

But he was a drinker and he was a bully.

She called him a street angel and a house devil.

And she didn't want to have happen to me

what happened to my brother.

He was beaten.

My mom says that the sex was wonderful.

And the other part was horrible.

And he would lay in there, man.

And I would just grit my teeth and think, you know,

"I hate you. I hate you."

So, one night when she had fled from him

temporarily to her father's house,

my grandfather on 112th Street...

And we had to get out of that house.

My father was trying to batter the fucking door down.

She took me in her arms, two months,

that's what she says,

he was five years old, my brother.

She went out the window onto the fire escape.

And my old man was trying to tear

the fucking door off the hinges and we jump into my uncle's car,

and he drives us up here to the Catskills

where we hid out.

And we were vagabonds for about two or three years

until she found an apartment

and we established a little-- she called it our little home.

After their separation...

Catholics didn't get divorced.

They could, but only the rich ones.

He died when I was eight years old.

His first symptom of heart disease

was a trip to the cemetery.

George Carlin reporting

the news at six o'clock.

Looks like we're about to win the war after all.

A new bomb is quote-unquote the XYZ Bomb.

It's a wonderful bomb and it can blow up the whole world.

I was growing up in World War II

and post-war New York City, being raised by a single mother

who had a great gift and love of language,

and who imparted that to me.

But I was alone in the house. My mother had to work.