George Carlin, my hero.

George Carlin was a hero of mine. He was everything I would like to be: smart, funny, creative, a challenger to all authority, successful, witty and somehow both happy and angry at the same time. He used his medium, comedy, so well that sometimes it was important to remind one's self that what he said was not only funny, but true. When Carlin died, the mainstream media decided that they needed one fifteen second clip to sum up an author, actor and comedian whose career spanned five decades. They, of course, chose the Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television. They failed to mention, in most cases, that Carlin's recognition of the things that are wrong and excessive in this country was nearly always spot-on. He was skeptical of authority and government, and realized that the "owners of this country" don't want this place to be fixed. Here's the late genius in a particularly poignant clip, which I will quote a few times for those unable to watch (language is salty, NSFW and awesome).

"There's a reason education sucks, and it's the same reason that it will never, ever, ever be fixed. It's never going to get any better, don't look for it, be happy with what you got. Because the owners of this country don't want that. I'm talking about the real owners now, the wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're irrelevant. The politicians are put there to give the illusion that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you! They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations, they've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, city halls, they've got the judges in their back pocket and the own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They've got you by the balls! They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interest.

They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard thirty fucking years ago. They don't want that. You know what they want? They want obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And now they're coming for your Social Security money. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it all from you sooner or later because they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club."

Here's an extended version of the clip, as created for the Ron Paul Presidential campaign.

Carlin was marginalized upon his death. Since public schools are indoctrination centers which tell us that we have to choose between members of the "big club," it's up to us to remind each other and our progeny that we can do better.