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George Carlin reads TPM


For my first blog entry, I'll begin modestly with a link to a wonderful George Carlin interview at Huffington Post.

In typical Carlin fashion, he gives a blistering appraisal of the American experience:
I think that human beings were given great gifts and had great potential and they squandered it all on goods, possession, power, territory and on a superstitious God that watches everything and controls. These things, I think, crippled the human animal to the extend that we never lived up to their potential. The same thing happened in this country. We were given great potential. We were given this great system of self-government, the best one that had been devised so far. And we've given it all up for gizmos, and goods, and toys and possessions, and - in this country - God, overlooking everything and spoiling everything.
He proceeds with his take on the rise of Obama:
So... there have been moments in this country when people have, leaders have emerged who were inspirational, and who could carry the people with them because — in order to effect change in their lives and experience as a group, they need to be led, and they need to believe in something and they need to believe in themselves, and they need to believe that they can change things. And they way that happens is through an inspirational leader. FDR was that, Franklin Roosevelt - he gave people something to believe in, and mainly it was themselves, that they could weather the storm, and he got them through the Depression and a fuckin' World War. So, these things happen and they're interesting to notice - I don't know how much overall meaning it has, I do respect what's going on as a true American phenomenon, this rising up of someone who - maybe, I don't know - has the quality to inspire people.
And amidst his razor-sharp yet compassionate critique of our wacky species, he namedrops TPM as one of his regular blog reads!

Thank God for this lovable fool who keeps us all sane!

2 Comments

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Hi George! I'm a big fan and enjoyed your HBO special this weekend!

I'm glad I got that off my chest!

And just below this post, there's a "Jesus Saves" ad. Curious.

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ami_in_deutschland

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Expat Earthling. An Air Force brat with the complicated past and multiple neuroses to prove it. I've been living in southwest Germany since 1995 and am looking forward to a reversal of the ever-growing estrangement I've felt to my country of citizenship. Oh yeah -- despite what the alias seems to suggest, I'm a guy. ("Ami" -- pronounced ahh-mee -- is German slang for "American")

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