Wayne Shorter: The Living Legacy of a Great Musician, Composer, and Philosopher

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/arts/music/wayne-shorters-new-album-is-without-a-net.html?ref=arts&_r=0&pagewanted=all

Robert Yager for The New York Times
Wayne Shorter, the saxophonist and composer, is nearly 80 and remains driven and influential.

"I knew Wayne Shorter first in Newark where we were both, malevolently, born.  He was one of the two "weird" Shorter brothers that people mentioned occasionally, usually as a metaphorical reference, "...as weird as Wayne."

--Leroi Jones,  "Introducing Wayne Shorter", Jazz Review,  1959

“We have to beware the trapdoors of the self. You think you’re the only one that has a mission, and your mission is so unique, and you expound this missionary process over and over again with something you call a vocabulary, which in itself becomes old and decrepit.” 

--Wayne Shorter,  2013

All,

A Great Artist.  A Great Musician.  A Great Composer.  A Great Human Being  (And a Bad Muthafucka).  My eternal goal remains to be fortunate enough to become "as weird as Wayne"...

Kofi


Major Jazz Eminence, Little Grise

Wayne Shorter’s New Album Is ‘Without a Net’
 

By NATE CHINEN

January 31, 2013 

New York Times

THE STANDARD LINE on Wayne Shorter is that he’s the greatest living composer in jazz, and one of its greatest saxophonists. He would like you to forget all of that. Not the music, or his relationship to it, but rather the whole notion of pre-eminence, with its granite countenance and fixed coordinates. “We have to beware the trapdoors of the self,” he said recently.

Alejandro Bolivar/European Pressphoto Agency
Wayne Shorter at a festival in January.

Erin Baiano for The New York Times
The Wayne Shorter Quartet, with Danilo Pérez on piano, Mr. Shorter on saxophone, John Patitucci on bass and Brian Blade on drums, performing at Lincoln Center.

“You think you’re the only one that has a mission,” he went on, “and your mission is so unique, and you expound this missionary process over and over again with something you call a vocabulary, which in itself becomes old and decrepit.” He laughed sharply.

Mr. Shorter will turn 80 this year. Decrepitude hasn’t had a chance to catch up to him. Last week he appeared at Carnegie Hall as a featured guest with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, which played several of his compositions. On Tuesday “Without a Net,” easily the year’s most anticipated jazz album, will become his first release on Blue Note in more than four decades. And next Saturday he’ll be at the Walt Disney Concert Hall with the Los Angeles Philharmonic for the premiere of “Gaia,” which he wrote as a showcase for the bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding.

He hasn’t accrued this late-inning momentum alone. The vehicle for most of Mr. Shorter’s recent activity, including the orchestral work, is his superlative quartet with Danilo Pérez on piano, John Patitucci on bass and Brian Blade on drums. A band of spellbinding intuition, with an absolute commitment to the spirit of discovery, it has had an incalculable influence on the practice of jazz in the 21st century — and not necessarily for the same reasons that established Mr. Shorter’s legend in the 20th.

Since the emergence of the quartet, which released its first album on Verve in 2002, jazz’s aesthetic center has moved perceptibly: away from the hotshot soloist and toward a more collectivist, band-driven ideal. There has also been an unusual amount of dialogue between jazz’s tradition-minded base camp and its expeditionary outposts, where conventions exist to be challenged.

Mr. Shorter’s working band is far from the only one to embody these principles during the past decade, but it has been the most acclaimed and widely heard. Traces of its style can be detected in other groups, including those led by the saxophonist Chris Potter and the trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire. Its slippery methodology has also taken root in the conservatory, and not just at the Berklee College of Music, where Mr. Pérez is on the faculty, or at the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, where Mr. Shorter is a resident guru.

“The students are very familiar with that quartet,” said Doug Weiss, who teaches a popular Wayne Shorter ensemble class at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music. “They come in having heard the way that band plays together, and a lot of them have no idea what’s going on, and that’s why they’re there.”

So in addition to Mr. Shorter’s body of work — his terse and insinuative compositions, which have been closely studied by jazz musicians for decades — this newer generation has also had the opportunity to grapple with his elusive philosophy of play.

Once, in an interview, Mr. Shorter was asked to account for his pursuit of music above other art forms. He replied that music has an inherent sense of velocity and mystery. It would be hard to find a more concise distillation of his priorities as a bandleader.

“When we go out onstage we always start from nothing,” said Mr. Patitucci by phone from Mr. Pérez’s native Panama, where the quartet headlined a jazz festival last month. “So anybody can spin the wheels in a certain direction, and then we develop those themes.”

What follows isn’t free jazz, exactly, though it uses some of the same tools. “It’s spontaneous composition,” Mr. Patitucci said, “with counterpoint and harmony and lyricism. All of those values are still there. It’s just being pressurized into milliseconds.”

Mr. Shorter framed the idea as an image: “We don’t count how much water there is in a wave when we see the ocean.” He was on the couch of a hotel suite overlooking Central Park South, during one of his recent visits from Los Angeles, where he lives. That evening he would perform at a gala for the David Lynch Foundation, along with the pianist Herbie Hancock, his former partner in the Miles Davis Quintet. He wore dress loafers and a fleece pullover embroidered with the logo of Soka Gakkai International, the Nichiren Buddhist organization to which he and Mr. Hancock belong.

A scheduled interview began with an unscheduled interruption: Ms. Spalding — who won the Grammy for best new artist in 2011, and was also booked at the gala — dropped by with the Argentine pianist Leo Genovese. For all of her success Ms. Spalding still belongs to the demographic that grew up with the notion of Wayne as sage: she and Mr. Genovese were there simply to give him a hug.

Mr. Shorter is a notoriously elliptical conversationalist, prone to cosmic digression and quick-fire allusion. During a spirited two-hour interview he touched on modern art, social politics and science fiction — among the books he produced for inspection was the dystopian “Ready Player One” by Ernest Cline — as well as music and movies, and movie music. “I’m looking at a lot of old silent films now,” he said, “and I listen to the new, hip boy bands. I was checking out some Selena Gomez.” On the subject of jazz, he said pithily, “The word ‘jazz’ to me only means ‘I dare you.’ ”

But he also painted his own jazz narrative in precise strokes, whether it was hearing Charlie Parker at Birdland at the age of 18 — what stuck with him was a quotation of “Petrushka,” the Stravinsky ballet, that Parker sneaked into one solo — or sensing the mortal urgency that burned in John Coltrane, his fellow saxophonist, and in some ways a mentor. And Mr. Shorter made several references to the cryptic wisdom of Miles Davis, slipping each time into an unusually convincing imitation of that trumpeter’s throaty rasp.

Davis’s celebrated quintet of the mid-’60s was one of the most aerodynamically advanced in the history of jazz, and apart from Davis himself Mr. Shorter was its chief in-house designer. One of his signature contributions was “Nefertiti,” a slithery 16-bar tune ambiguously shaded with altered and half-diminished chords.

On record, as the title track to a 1968 album, the song features Davis and Mr. Shorter tracing and retracing its melody while the rhythm section improvises in the background, with all the supple intrigue of a shadow creeping across the landscape. It’s a useful precedent for Mr. Shorter’s current band, which derives much of its dynamism from rhythm-section cohesion within the loosest possible framework.

Another precedent, less obvious, is the transitional band that Davis led before his swerve into jazz-funk, a quintet with Mr. Shorter, the pianist Chick Corea, the bassist Dave Holland and the drummer Jack DeJohnette. A boxed set released last week on Columbia/Legacy, “Live in Europe 1969: The Bootleg Series Vol. 2,” illuminates just how much liberty that group took with its materials, even to the point of feverish abstraction. It never sounds freer than on a concert in Stockholm, attacking three of Mr. Shorter’s compositions: “Paraphernalia,” “Nefertiti” and “Masqualero.”

Two of those have surfaced on Mr. Shorter’s recent albums with the quartet, along with other pieces from a broad swath of his career. “Without a Net,” a compilation of live recordings from 2011, opens with “Orbits,” a theme from the Davis quintet era. It also includes a majestic take on “Plaza Real,” from the songbook of Weather Report, the epochal ’70s fusion band that Mr. Shorter led with Joe Zawinul.

But the provenance of the music takes a back seat to its process, which Mr. Shorter said was meant to herald an ideal of self-actualized communal leadership. “This kind of stuff I’m talking about is a challenge to play onstage,” he allowed, and chuckled. “When Miles would hear someone talking about something philosophical, he would say” — here came the rasp — “ ‘Well, why don’t you go out there and play that?’ One thing we talk about is that to ‘play that’ we have to maybe play music that doesn’t sound like music.”

If that sounds like a Zen riddle, comfort yourself with the knowledge that even Mr. Shorter’s band mates have had to warm to the uncertainty. “It was scary, to be honest,” Mr. Pérez said of his early experience in the quartet. “It was a shock to put myself into a situation where I had no idea what was happening. Even when I listened back, I felt like an outsider: ‘What is that? What key are we in?’ ” He gradually made adjustments, including one to his practice regimen: for two or three hours at a stretch he would watch Tom and Jerry cartoons with the sound muted, making up a score.

The band hasn’t relaxed its pursuit of revelation, which expresses itself in myriad ways: Mr. Pérez’s on-the-fly cadenzas, the unexpected thunderclap of Mr. Blade’s crash cymbal, the dartlike insistence of Mr. Shorter’s improvisational flights. All this remains true even as Mr. Shorter steps up his output as a composer. “He’ll bring in this 10-page piece of music, and it’s gorgeous,” Mr. Patitucci said. “And he’ll say, ‘Just this 16 bars.’ He’s not even attached to what he wrote.”

The center of gravity on “Without a Net” is “Pegasus,” designed to feature Imani Winds, a classical wind ensemble. Through much of that track’s 23 minutes, the woodwinds deftly frame the dramatic fluctuations of Mr. Shorter’s band; at times the two factions achieve a compelling synthesis, advancing a dramatic theme.

It’s horizon-scanning music, but it also features glimpses of the past, like the fanfare from “Witch Hunt,” which led off Mr. Shorter’s landmark 1965 Blue Note album “Speak No Evil.” During his solo in “Pegasus” Mr. Shorter also nods to the old Sonny Rollins tune “Oleo.” Elsewhere on the new album he drops a quotation of the Afro-Cuban bebop standard “Manteca,” and leads the band through a cubist recasting of “Flying Down to Rio,” a movie theme originally sung by Fred Astaire.

“To me there’s no such thing as beginning or end,” Mr. Shorter said. “I always say don’t discard the past completely because you have to bring with you the most valuable elements of experience, to be sort of like a flashlight. A flashlight into the unknown.”

The Centrality of the Occupy Wall Street Movement to Social and Economic Justice in Our Time

http://www.truth-out.org/occupy-wall-street-demanding-justice/1317995739

"The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways but the point is to change it"

--Karl Marx

"Brooks' column against empathy goes a long way towards making the moral case for the Republican austerity agenda, without coming right out and saying so. That's especially true if you look at it as a moral agenda: one that turns a dispassionate eye towards the people who will bear the brunt of it, and endure a great deal more pain and anxiety in the process

But Americans caught in the teeth of this recession aren't necessarily buying the conservative moral argument that it's our own fault. Elizabeth Warren [31] put succinctly the understanding that moved so many to "occupy Wall Street."

Warren also drew applause for her tough talk on Wall Street. "The people on Wall Street broke this country, and they did it one lousy mortgage at a time. It happened more than three years ago, and there has been no real accountability, and there has been no real effort to fix it."


All,

This is a great piece on the specific philosophical, moral, and ethical dimensions of the current economic and political crisis in this country and what the various ideological responses to them in both theoretical and practical terms actually MEANS to the masses of people being victimized and destroyed by this crisis's ongoing fallout. By brilliantly slashing through the blatantly self serving and self righteous bluster and pompous 'morally supremacist' rhetoric of such conservative/reactionary figures as the New York Times columnist and resident house "philosopher" David Brooks, Herman Cain (the number one avatar of the craven philosophy of 'Uncle Tomism' in modern American politics today) and the leading Tea Party followers in Congress of Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman like Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, and Rand Paul (not to mention their fervent allegiance to such insidiously influential and rabidly pro-capitalist economic gurus as Alan Greenspan and Friedrich Hayek), the author of this article Terrance Heath goes to the very heart of the massive struggle being undertaken at this historical moment in the streets of New York and across the country as well as the corporate and governmental lobbying centers of Washington D.C.

Kofi


Occupy Wall Street: Demanding Justice
by Terrance Heath, Campaign for America's Future [3] Report
7 October 2011
Truthout

It's been a while since empathy [4] — the uniquely human capacity to recognize and share the feelings experienced by others, that science even suggests is hardwired in us — when President Obama [5] included it in the qualities he sought in a Supreme Court appointee, and conservatives [6] from Glenn Beck [7] to Sen. Jim Sessions [8]. So I was surprised to see columnist David Brooks [9] turn the spotlight on empathy again.

However, when I put it in the context of popular and growing movements like Occupy Wall Street [10] and We are the 99 Percent [11], and even the movements in Wisconsin and Ohio, I was not surprised to see Brooks holding forth on the shortcomings of empathy. The success of these progressive movements constitute a powerful challenge to conservatives.

"The problem comes when we try to turn feeling into action. Empathy makes you more aware of other people’s suffering, but it’s not clear it actually motivates you to take moral action or prevents you from taking immoral action.

…Empathy orients you toward moral action, but it doesn’t seem to help much when that action comes at a personal cost. You may feel a pang for the homeless guy on the other side of the street, but the odds are that you are not going to cross the street to give him a dollar.

…Nobody is against empathy. Nonetheless, it’s insufficient. These days empathy has become a shortcut. It has become a way to experience delicious moral emotions without confronting the weaknesses in our nature that prevent us from actually acting upon them. It has become a way to experience the illusion of moral progress without having to do the nasty work of making moral judgments. In a culture that is inarticulate about moral categories and touchy about giving offense, teaching empathy is a safe way for schools and other institutions to seem virtuous without risking controversy or hurting anybody’s feelings.

People who actually perform pro-social action don’t only feel for those who are suffering, they feel compelled to act by a sense of duty. Their lives are structured by sacred codes.

Brooks makes an interesting point in the conservative case against empathy, by first arguing that no one is against empathy, and then arguing why sometimes one should be. He instead argues for strong moral codes that allow "pro-social" action without empathy, driven instead by duty. It doesn't end up with any answers. It doesn't replace empathy, because with empathy comes compassion, and Brooks almost extolls morality driven action that may be void of compassion.

We take care of the poor because we "must." Because "God" commands us to. But it doesn't mean we have to "expand our moral imaginations" [12] (as President Obama put it, in his Tucson speech [13]) and put ourselves in their shoes or put ourselves in their places. Moral judgment like that Brooks favors over empathy allows for a separation between "us" and "them," it casts "them" as "Other," and puts a comfortable distance between "us" and "them." Empathy requires some level of identification with another, and a recognition of some basic degree of commonality.

Empathy makes casting moral judgments upon others more complicated and more difficult, because seeing something of our reality in them gives them a context — a "story" like our own, which frames their choices and actions with complexities that bleed over into our stories and those of others.

For conservatives like Brooks, empathy in government becomes even more troublesome, because it subverts morality by shielding people from the consequences of their sins [14].

"When you are the president in a financial crisis, you have the power to pave roads and hire teachers. That will reduce the suffering of real people who would otherwise be jobless. You have the power to streamline regulations and reduce tax burdens. That will induce a bit more hiring and activity. These are real contributions.

But you don’t have the power to transform the whole situation. Your discrete goods might contribute to an overall turnaround, but that turnaround will be beyond your comprehension and control.

Over the past decades, Americans have developed an absurd view of the power of government. Many voters seem to think that government has the power to protect them from the consequences of their sins. Then they get angry and cynical when it turns out that it can’t."

Sins? Sins, did you say? What sins?

Brooks' moral case for a "do nothing" (or at little as possible) approach to the economic crisis is not only classic conservatism, but fits nearly into the conservative worldview that George Lakoff nailed in his book Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think [15]:

"Competition is necessary for a moral world; without it, people would not have to develop discipline and so would not become moral beings. Worldly success is an indicator of sufficient moral strength; lack of success suggests lack of sufficient discipline. Dependency is immoral. The undisciplined will be weak and poor, and deservedly so.

Strict Father Morality demonstrates a natural Moral Order: Those who are moral should be in power. The Moral Order legitimizes traditional power relations as being natural, determining a hierarchy of Moral Authority: God above Man; Man above Nature; Adults above Children; Western Culture above Non-western Culture; America above other nations. (There are other traditional aspects of the Moral Order that are less accepted than they used to be: Straights above Gays; Christians above non-Christians; Men above Women; White above Non-whites.)

Since to participate in the promotion or preservation of immorality is itself immoral, it is a moral requirement to eradicate immorality—through "tough love" if possible but through punishment if necessary—in every aspect of life, both public and private, domestic and foreign."

Put plainly, the better off are better off because they are better people. The poor, the unemployed, the underemployed, the uninsured, etc, are solely to blame for their condition. The have-nots are have-nots because they "have not" the right moral character. The most recent example of this is Herman Cain's recent statement on joblessness and inequality [16].

Joblessness, unemployment, the economic crisis, the foreclosure crisis. You name it, conservatives blame it all on the sins of "Others." Maybe it's Blacks and Latinos that caused the foreclosure crisis [17]. Maybe its gays and same-sex marriage that caused the economic meltdown [18]. And the over 15 million jobless Americans are jobless because the just are looking and hoping hard enough [19].

Rounding out this trip through the conservative mindset by way of Brooks and Cain is Ron Paul's recent appearance on The Daily Show [20]:

The Daily Show [21]


Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes [22],Political Humor & Satire Blog [23],The Daily Show on Facebook [24]

'Do you worry that you trust us more than you should," Stewart asked, expressing his concern for unregulated markets.

"When I talk to young people, and I talk to a lot of them," Paul replied. "I say, if we can get your freedom back just remember the decisions you make affect yourself and you can't come crawling to the government for some help. When I make a decision or the government makes a decision, it's for everybody. When you make a bad decision, it only hurts you. So, if you have great faith in people, then you have to say, well, the people are the politicians. And quite frankly, the people I know in Washington aren't capable of telling you what you ought to do."

But the issue to Stewart is one of public empathy.

"Doesn't trusting the people also then accept the fact that people won't let their fellow man be in a position where they fail?" Stewart asked.

It's worth repeating: "When you make a bad decision it only hurts you." It runs counter to common sense. If I decide, starting today, to drive on the left side of the road and to ignore speed limits, that's a decision that's likely to hurt me. But it's not only going to hurt me. Given the certainty that my decision will cause an accident, it will hurt the other party. They could suffer a loss of property, depending on the damage to their car. They could suffer a loss of health or even a loss of life if they are severely injured as a result of my decision to flout "government" regulations that "tell me what I ought to do"; like which side of the road I should drive on, or how fast I should go.

What decision would the other party have made that hurt them? Merely to drive home along the same route they always take, and abide by the traffic laws. Now, you could say that it's their fault because they could have chosen another route, thus avoided me. In other words, It was their fault for being on the road, even if they were following the rules.

But common sense tells you it was my decision that hurt them. The law would certainly see it that way, and my consequences could include a fine and/or jail time for vehicular homicide. Our laws recognize that the choices people make have consequences for other people, whose only fault was doing what they were supposed to be doing. Common sense and the law recognize that situations like these call for accountability.

Cast the same story in the context of the economic crisis, substitute Wall Street for yours truly, and middle- and working-class Americans for the injured party, and conservatives like Brooks, Cain, and Paul essentially say: It's their own damn fault.

Brooks says Americans have an "absurd" idea that government exists to "protect them from the consequences of their sins." But it's the consequences of the sins of others government protects us from, when it works. The reality is that for decades government has failed to protect us from the sins of others who fall into the category of "corporate persons," and that's the source of the anger and cynicism Brooks mentioned.

Steve Benen [25] asks:

Has Brooks ever actually spoken to anyone who’s falling further behind? As poverty rates reach one in six, does the columnist sincerely believe systemic sin is responsible? With unemployment over 9%, is Brooks convinced that all the jobless deserved to be forced from their jobs?

As for the role of the state, Brooks believes the public simply needs to be conditioned — stop thinking government will provide a net, and you won’t be disappointed when government intervention seems inadequate.

The reason that movements like Occupy Wall Street and We Are the 99 Percent have taken off is because millions of Americans have actually spoken with someone who's falling behind. We do so every day. We don't have to go far to find them, because they are often our friends, neighbors and family members. Those of us who are still hanging on in this recession live and work beside others who are in the same precarious position, just a step or two from falling — or being pushed — into the abyss.

That's the reason, as Bryce Covert [26] writes, that the other 99% of us are crying out.

While signs at the protests have many, many messages — from BP to Iran to capital punishment — the affiliated Tumblr, We Are the 99 Percent [11], exposes what’s motivating people to get on the streets. With over 700 submissions at this point, Americans from all over have been writing down personal stories to explain their frustrations. While those protesting on Wall Street have grievances that are far ranging, those on the Tumblr are almost all sparked by a combination of a few common things: joblessness, debt, and low wages. They are the stories of those who can’t make ends meet. These days, that covers a lot of us.

As spontaneous as these movements seem, the truth is they've been building for a long time. As Andy Kroll writes, they stem from a "decade from hell," for middle- and working-class Americans.

In recent months, a blizzard of new data, the hardest of hard numbers, has laid bare the dilapidated condition of the American economy, and particularly of the once-mighty American middle class. Each report sparks a flurry of news stories and pundit chatter, but never much reflection on what it all means now that we have just enough distance to look back on the first decade of the twenty-first century and see how Americans fared in that turbulent period.

And yet the verdict couldn’t be more clear-cut. For the American middle class, long the pride of this country and the envy of the world, the past 10 years were a bust. A washout. A decade from hell.

Paychecks shrank. Household wealth melted away like so many sandcastles swept off by the incoming tide. Poverty spiked, swallowing an ever-greater share of the population, young and old."This is truly a lost decade," Harvard University economist Lawrence Katz said of these last years. "We think of America as a place where every generation is doing better, but we're looking at a period when the median family is in worse shape than it was in the late 1990s."

That it happened at the same time that that the top 1% enjoyed record low taxes [27] and captured the lion's share of income [28], isn't lost on the millions of Americans in the other 99%. The 1% took a hit to their stock portfolios when the at the start of the recession [29], but have since recovered. It's no coincidence that we see America as more divided between haves and have-nots than ever before [30].

Take a look at a new poll from the Pew Center on People and Press, showing that the number of Americans who think we’re a country divided into the “haves” and “have nots” shot up by 10 percent over the past three years, after a bit of a decline the year prior:

Brooks' column against empathy goes a long way towards making the moral case for the Republican austerity agenda, without coming right out and saying so. That's especially true if you look at it as a moral agenda: one that turns a dispassionate eye towards the people who will bear the brunt of it, and endure a great deal more pain and anxiety in the process

But Americans caught in the teeth of this recession aren't necessarily buying the conservative moral argument that it's our own fault. Elizabeth Warren [31] put succinctly the understanding that moved so many to "occupy Wall Street."

Warren also drew applause for her tough talk on Wall Street. "The people on Wall Street broke this country, and they did it one lousy mortgage at a time. It happened more than three years ago, and there has been no real accountability, and there has been no real effort to fix it."

Young Americans, joined by everyone from airline pilots to labor unions and U.S. Marines (about as far from "hippies" as one could imagine) have occupied Wall Street for weeks now, because they know who "broke" the economy. Americans are occupying Washington, D.C., because they know who "broke" the economy, who allowed it to happen, and who still hasn't done much of anything about it. We have been living with the consequences of "sins" not our own, because our government failed to protect us from the sins of others. Namely, Wall Street.

Americans are occupying their own cities all over the country [32], because they know in a crisis this big, the scene of the crime is in our own cities, our neighborhoods, and sometimes even in our own living rooms; because we have friends or family who are getting laid off because of local/state budget cuts [33] that state/local jobs cuts [34] that are slowing down what passes as a recovery [35]; because we are or have children who are graduating off a cliff [36] into a jobless recovery and an economy with no place for them; because foreclosures have left our neighborhoods struggling with blight [37]; because the future we dreamed up for our children is in peril.

For all these reasons and more, Americans are taking to the streets [38]. There's a line that runs from the Wisconsin protests [39], connecting them. Instead of hardening our hearts against each other, the economic crisis has "sharpened our instincts for empathy" and, as President Obama said in his Tucson speech, caused us to "remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together." We have not used it as an opportunity to turn on each other. Instead, a sense of shared struggles has empowers us to demand accountability and justice [40].

In his opening address to the Take Back The American Dream conference, Van Jones [41] reminded those who were inspired by Barack Obama's 2008 campaign, "You inspired him first." What's happening now — what we've seen in Occupy Wall Street, in We Are the 99 Percent, in the protests in Wisconsin and Ohio, etc. — is that we are inspiring each other. We may have inspired Obama again, if the White House's change in tune is any indication. But the real game-changer beyond 2012 may be that we are inspiring each other. The real game changer may be a belief embodied in the Wisconsin protests, theAmerican Dream movement [42], and Occupy Wall street, not only that — as Van said — "something can be done," but that we can make it happen.




Links:

[1] http://www.truth-out.org/print/7233
[2] http://www.truth-out.org/printmail/7233
[3] http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2011104006/demanding-justice
[4] http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/empathy
[5] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/12/AR2009051203515.html
[6] http://voices.washingtonpost.com/supreme-court/2009/05/obamas_empathy_standard_drawin.html
[7] http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rewire-your-brain-love/201003/empathy-leads-you-very-bad-decisions-what-empathy-the-brain-and-r
[8] http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/23425.html
[9] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/opinion/brooks-the-limits-of-empathy.html
[10] http://occupywallst.org/
[11] http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/
[12] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/13/AR2011011301532_pf.html
[13] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztbJmXQDIGA
[14] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/16/opinion/brooks-the-planning-fallacy.html
[15] http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Politics-Liberals-Conservatives-Think/dp/0226467716
[16] http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2011/10/5/18011/4930
[17] http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2008094030/firing-back-cra-strikeoutexcuse-diversionstrikeout-libel
[18] http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2011051911/tea-partys-bankrupt-values
[19] http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2010020501/jobs-and-magical-thinking
[20] http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/312025
[21] http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-september-26-2011/exclusive---ron-paul-extended-interview-pt--2
[22] http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/
[23] http://www.indecisionforever.com/
[24] http://www.facebook.com/thedailyshow
[25] http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_09/david_brooks_and_the_absurd_vi032270.php
[26] http://www.newdeal20.org/2011/10/05/why-the-99-percent-is-crying-out-60916/
[27] http://consortiumnews.com/2011/10/05/reagans-greed-is-good-folly/
[28] http://www.alternet.org/economy/152621/if_top_1_hadn%27t_ripped_off_trillions%2C_you%27d_likely_be_making_thousands_of_dollars_more_right_now
[29] http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2011/10/occupy_wall_street_says_the_top_one_1_percent_of_americans_have_.html
[30] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/whats-driving-occupy-wall-street-in-one-chart/2011/10/05/gIQANAe6NL_blog.html
[31] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/05/elizabeth-warren-debate-wall-street-scott-brown_n_996001.html
[32] http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/10/occupy-wall-street-protest-map
[33] http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/09/16/321494/sinners-in-the-hand-of-an-angry-columnist/
[34] http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2015250531_stateecon07.html
[35] http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2011/09/02/public-sector-losses-continue-to-drive-poor-jobs-numbers
[36] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/van-jones/graduating-off-a-cliff-th_b_850311.html
[37] http://www.latimes.com/la-fi-vacant28aug28,0,7927104.story
[38] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15208240
[39] http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/10/wisconsin-occupy-wall-street
[40] http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/what_do_they_want_justice_20111006/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Truthdig+Truthdig%3A+Drilling+Beneath+the+Headlines
[41] http://institute.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2011104003/take-back-message-something-can-be-done
[42] http://rebuildthedream.com/
[43] http://www.truth-out.org/printmail
[44] http://www.truth-out.org/content/terrance-heath
[45] http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/6694/p/salsa/web/common/public/signup?signup_page_KEY=2160
[46] https://members.truth-out.org/donate
[47] http://www.truth-out.org/?q=occupywallstreet-more-hashtag-its-revolution-formation/1316784846
[48] http://www.truth-out.org/?q=correcting-abysmal-new-york-times-coverage-occupy-wall-street/1317056656

Social Philosophy, U.S. Intellectual History, Political Ideology, and Barack Obama

All,

I agree 100% with the very last paragraph of the article below--I'm an intellectual skeptic as well. This means that I always make a critical assessment of a politician's "philosophy"--pro or con-- strictly on the basis of what they actually do as opposed to simply what they say. In my view one's social philosophy must be practical to be of real use and value or as the prophetic political philosopher and revolutionary social activist Karl Marx once said in a famous statement from 1845:

"PHILOSOPHERS HAVE ONLY INTERPRETED THE WORLD IN VARIOUS WAYS BUT THE POINT IS TO CHANGE IT."

Kofi

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/28/books/28klopp.html?_r=1&ref=patricia_cohen


In Writings of Obama, a Philosophy Is Unearthed
By PATRICIA COHEN
October 27, 2010
New York Times

When the Harvard historian James T. Kloppenberg decided to write about the influences that shaped President Obama’s view of the world, he interviewed the president’s former professors and classmates, combed through his books, essays, and speeches, and even read every article published during the three years Mr. Obama was involved with the Harvard Law Review (“a superb cure for insomnia,” Mr. Kloppenberg said). What he did not do was speak to President Obama.

“He would have had to deny every word,” Mr. Kloppenberg said with a smile. The reason, he explained, is his conclusion that President Obama is a true intellectual — a word that is frequently considered an epithet among populists with a robust suspicion of Ivy League elites.

In New York City last week to give a standing-room-only lecture about his forthcoming intellectual biography, “Reading Obama: Dreams, Hopes, and the American Political Tradition,” Mr. Kloppenberg explained that he sees Mr. Obama as a kind of philosopher president, a rare breed that can be found only a handful of times in American history.

“There’s John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and John Quincy Adams, then Abraham Lincoln and in the 20th century just Woodrow Wilson,” he said.

To Mr. Kloppenberg the philosophy that has guided President Obama most consistently is pragmatism, a uniquely American system of thought developed at the end of the 19th century by William James, John Dewey and Charles Sanders Peirce. It is a philosophy that grew up after Darwin published his theory of evolution and the Civil War reached its bloody end. More and more people were coming to believe that chance rather than providence guided human affairs, and that dogged certainty led to violence.

Pragmatism maintains that people are constantly devising and updating ideas to navigate the world in which they live; it embraces open-minded experimentation and continuing debate. “It is a philosophy for skeptics, not true believers,” Mr. Kloppenberg said.

Those who heard Mr. Kloppenberg present his argument at a conference on intellectual history at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center responded with prolonged applause. “The way he traced Obama’s intellectual influences was fascinating for us, given that Obama’s academic background seems so similar to ours,” said Andrew Hartman, a historian at Illinois State University who helped organize the conference.

Mr. Kloppenberg’s interest in the education of Barack Obama began from a distance. He spent 2008, the election year, at the University of Cambridge in England and found himself in lecture halls and at dinner tables trying to explain who this man was.

Race, temperament and family history are all crucial to understanding the White House’s current occupant, but Mr. Kloppenberg said he chose to focus on one slice of the president’s makeup: his ideas.

In the professor’s analysis the president’s worldview is the product of the country’s long history of extending democracy to disenfranchised groups, as well as the specific ideological upheavals that struck campuses in the 1980s and 1990s. He mentions, for example, that Mr. Obama was at Harvard during “the greatest intellectual ferment in law schools in the 20th century,” when competing theories about race, feminism, realism and constitutional original intent were all battling for ground.

Mr. Obama was ultimately drawn to a cluster of ideas known as civic republicanism or deliberative democracy, Mr. Kloppenberg argues in the book, which Princeton University Press will publish on Sunday. In this view the founding fathers cared as much about continuing a discussion over how to advance the common good as they did about ensuring freedom.

Taking his cue from Madison, Mr. Obama writes in his 2006 book “The Audacity of Hope” that the constitutional framework is “designed to force us into a conversation,” that it offers “a way by which we argue about our future.” This notion of a living document is directly at odds with the conception of Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court, who has spoken of “the good, old dead Constitution.”

Mr. Kloppenberg compiled a long list of people who he said helped shape Mr. Obama’s thinking and writing, including Weber and Nietzsche, Thoreau and Emerson, Langston Hughes and Ralph Ellison. Contemporary scholars like the historian Gordon Wood, the philosophers John Rawls and Hilary Putnam, the anthropologist Clifford Geertz and the legal theorists Martha Minow and Cass Sunstein (who is now working at the White House) also have a place.

Despite the detailed examination, Mr. Kloppenberg concedes that President Obama remains something of a mystery.

“To critics on the left he seems a tragic failure, a man with so much potential who has not fulfilled the promise of change that partisans predicted for his presidency,” he said. “To the right he is a frightening success, a man who has transformed the federal government and ruined the economy.”

He finds both assessments flawed. Conservatives who argue that Mr. Obama is a socialist or an anti-colonialist (as Dinesh D’Souza does in his book “The Roots of Obama’s Rage”) are far off the mark, he said.

“Adams and Jefferson were the only anti-colonialists whom Obama has been affected by,” he told the audience in New York. “He has a profound love of America.”

And his opposition to inequality stems from Puritan preachers and the social gospel rather than socialism.

As for liberal critics, Mr. Kloppenberg took pains to differentiate the president’s philosophical pragmatism, which assumes that change emerges over decades, from the kind of “vulgar pragmatism” practiced by politicians looking only for expedient compromise. (He gave former President Bill Clinton’s strategy of “triangulation” as an example.)

Not all of the disappointed liberals who attended the lecture in New York were convinced that that distinction can be made so easily. T. J. Jackson Lears, a historian at Rutgers University, wrote in an e-mail that by “showing that Obama comes out of a tradition of philosophical pragmatism, he actually provided a basis for criticizing Obama’s slide into vulgar pragmatism.”

And despite Mr. Kloppenberg’s focus on the president’s intellectual evolution, most listeners wanted to talk about his political record.

“There seemed to be skepticism regarding whether Obama’s intellectual background actually translated into policies that the mostly left-leaning audience could get behind,” Mr. Hartman said. “Several audience members, myself included, probably view Obama the president as a centrist like Clinton rather than a progressive intellectual as painted by Kloppenberg.”

The Clear and Present Danger to Social Democracy, Economic Justice, and Cultural Literacy

http://www.truth-out.org/farewell-mon-amour-prospects-democracys-electoral-defeat64535

All,

The following essay by renowned educational scholar, cultural critic, author, social activist, and radical philosopher Henry Giroux raises profound and very important questions about our current path as a society and culture in the United States and does a scathing critique of how and why our corrupt politics and rapacious economic system-- as well as a general lack of real moral courage and philosophical vision-- is contributing to a very disturbing societal and cultural decline...

Kofi

Farewell Mon Amour: Prospects on Democracy's Electoral Defeat
Tuesday 26 October 2010
by: Henry A. Giroux, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed


Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For thirty years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material self-interest: indeed, this very pursuit now constitutes whatever remains of our sense of collective purpose. We know what things cost but have no idea what they are worth. We no longer ask of a judicial ruling or a legislative act: is it good? Is it fair? Is it just? Is it right? Will it help bring about a better society or a better world? Those used to be the political questions, even if they invited no easy answers. We must learn once again to pose them. --Tony Judt

In the midst of one of the greatest economic disasters the United States has ever faced, the Gilded Age and its updated "'dreamworlds' of consumption, property and power" have returned from the dead with zombie-like vengeance.(1) Poised now to take over either one or two houses of Congress, the exorbitantly rich along with their conservative ideologues wax nostalgically for a chance to once again emulate that period in 19th century American history when corporations ruled political, economic and social life, and an allegedly rugged entrepreneurial spirit prevailed unchecked by the power of government regulations. Wild West, casino capitalism, unhampered by either ethical considerations or social costs, has reinvented itself and become the politics of choice in this election year. Enthusiasm runs high as billions of dollars flow from hidden coffers into the hands of anti-public politicians, whose only allegiance is to power and the accumulation of capital.

In spite of almost unprecedented levels of inequality, hardship, human suffering and widespread public despair caused by the financial robber barons of Wall Street, the politics and values of Gilded Age excess are now celebrated by conservatives and Tea Party politicians, who define their retrograde politics as "having a flair for business, successfully [breaking] through the stultifying constraints that flowed from the New Deal" and using "their successes and their philanthropy [to make] government less important than it once was."(2) There is more at work here than a neo-feudal world view in which the future can only be measured in immediate financial gains and the amassing of colossal amounts of economic and political power. Massive disparities in wealth and power along with the weakening of worker protections and the destruction of the social state are now legitimated through a set of market-driven values in which politics is measured by the degree to which it evades any sense of actual truth and turns its back on even a vestige of moral responsibility. Under casino capitalism, politics increasingly becomes a front for the legitimation and exercise of ruthless corporate power. As politics loses its social purpose, not only does the state increasingly resort to modes of punishment, but the rules of politics are eviscerated of any moral and social responsibilities. Robber barons now decide the rules, and one consequence of such actions is that politics loses all sense of moral direction. Indeed, under such circumstances, the pathologies of inequality and injustice that cripple viable democracies are now rendered as inevitable and often celebrated as both a cleansing element and condition of politics itself.

If the first rule of robber baron politics is to make power invisible, the second is to make it unaccountable and the third rule is to give as much power as possible to those who revel in barbaric greed, social irresponsibility, unconscionable economic inequity, corrupt politics, resurgent monopolies and an unapologetic racism (parading as an attack on political correctness no less). The mainstream media and its rarely changing talking heads may wax endlessly about the populist anger fueling the current political climate, but it is a tragic mistake to overlook the fact that populism driven by authoritarian politics, while supplying an unmistakable enthusiasm to the current phase of electoral politics, is distinguished by and should be analyzed critically for the threat it poses to a democratic society.

A marauding market fundamentalism now rules most aspects of American life and the ever present and aggressively marketed forces of insecurity, fear, racism and retrograde common sense have become the organizing elements shaping everyday life. Global flows of capital now work in tandem with the logic of deregulation, privatization and commodification, while democracy at home is invoked under the conceit of the all encompassing "war on government," portrayed by Republicans in some cases as even more dangerous than al-Qaeda. This tawdry mobilization of fear and vitriol in the service of the most naked financial interests and elements of economic power is now staged as a 24-hour media performance that mimics the tawdriness and deceit of a rampant culture of corporate corruption and secrecy, now fully sanctioned by a Supreme Court, which in its 5-4 passage of the Citizens United decision, has willingly handed the government over to the Wall Street bankers, energy companies, insurance giants, hedge fund executives and the likes of the high flying stooges from the likes of Goldman Sachs. As finance capital reigns supreme over American society bolstered by the new and peculiar depoliticizing power of the corporate controlled media, democratization along with the public spheres needed to sustain it becomes an increasingly fragile if not dysfunctional project. Civic courage along with critical dissent are now in short supply, expunged to the margins of the alternative media and disdained by official power, even at the highest levels of government. Left and progressive critics are now described as whiners by both Obama and his politically and ethically deaf advisers. And while President Obama surfaced initially as someone who symbolized the antithesis of the moral vacuity and politics of illegality that characterized the Bush presidency, moral courage and civic leadership have been in short supply during his last two years in office. Rather than giving new life to the values of civic courage, economic justice and political idealism, Obama sacrificed such ideals to the advice of the gang of thieves who became his chief advisers. Consequently, Obama's unwillingness to fight for the democratic ideals he gave lip service to during his election campaign has given way in the last few years to a willingness on the part of his administration to overlook both the crimes committed by the financial elite, who brought us the current economic recession, and the political elite, who savaged civil liberties and made an illegal war and torture itself officially state-sanctioned policies. Forever appealing to the ideal of post-partisan politics, Obama lost sight of his moral compass and his capacity to fight for the democratic ideals he gave lip service to in his presidential campaign. One small indication of his bad judgment and the cleansing nature of his Harvard University acquired cultural capital came early in his presidency when he chose Beyonce over the inimitable Etta James to sing the latter's signature song "At Last" at his inaugural ball - a glimpse of the poor judgment and bad faith to come. James embodied the courage, poverty, bawdiness, passion, desire, history, suffering and perseverance of groups that Obama left behind once elected - a stark reminder of the kind of cultural and intellectual capital he would avoid as he began to surround himself with the alleged best and brightest.

Dark clouds are forming on the political and economic landscape of America, and while the precise nature of the current election is still unclear, one thing is resoundingly obvious. We have now entered another and more dangerous period of Gilded Age excess in which the primary political and economic forces dominating American life add up to what is unique about the current political conjuncture: its hatred of reason, freedom and democracy.(3) The possibilities of democracy are now addressed not through reason and critical debate, but with lies, stupidity, ignorance and a seething disdain for critical analysis, thoughtfulness and truth, all bought and sold through the power and money of goose-stepping billionaires such as the Koch brothers and Rupert Murdoch, who view democracy as a disease that must be crushed.(4) In an age of great insecurity marked by a persistent fear of losing one's job, house and control over the routines of daily life, the billionaire demagogues offer a politics without substance, shared fears rather than shared responsibilities and freedom without the benefit of social protections - and they do it by drowning out other voices through the sheer power of their deep pockets of wealth and power. There is no language about injustice and unfairness in these discourses, just the ramped up anger and noise of those who want to hand over all the social obligations of the state to private agencies so that "nothing remains to bind the citizen to the state but the fear of authority." And as Terry Eagleton has pointed out, "The result ... is an 'eviscerated society,' one stripped of the thick mesh of mutual obligations and social responsibilities to be found" in democratic states that celebrate rather than demonize the common good and public values.(5)

As the economy collapses and the call for austerity is used to punish the victims rather than perpetrators of economic corruption, the welfare state and social protections are relegated to a jaded memory. At the same time, a market ideology and morality reminiscent of the Gilded Age has once again become a triumphal success aggressively narrowing the meaning of freedom and the relevance of all public good and public institutions at odds with the logic of privatization and capital accumulation for the rich. With these transitions the more abstract concepts of individual agency and citizenship have been utterly devalued, stripped of any substantive meaning in an aspiring democracy. Right-wing politicians spend millions to win elections, distinguish themselves by calling for the dismantling of the social state and refer to those who need social services as burned out houses or jerks and freeloaders. The ideology of privatization is used to disparage not simply social services, but all public institutions whether they be schools, hospitals or transportation systems. Violence and a culture of cruelty now spread through the society like a wild fire and the costs can be seen in the suicides of gay teenagers, heartless images of firefighters laughing while a house burns down because the owners did not pay the required fee for the service, talking heads equating all Muslims with terrorists and billionaires such as Bill Gates calling for cuts in the pensions of hard working teachers. The survival-of-the-fittest ethic is no longer the narrative driving reality TV; it is now a central conception of politics and everyday life. Economic discourse now trumps social justice, reinforced by the ever popular chant of market evangelicals who unabashedly call for a society, if not a world, in which "all human activities and spaces can and should be absorbed into economic systems."(6) But there is more at stake here than the rise of iniquitous relations of wealth and power and the profound hardships that ensue for most Americans, there is also the rise of a punishing state that increasingly views a number of everyday problems as matters of law and order. With a prison population of 2.3 million, the United States now incarcerates more people than any other nation in the world; it also resorts increasingly to governing through a crime complex to deal with social problems far removed from the discourse and culture of criminality. How else to explain the return of debtor prisons, the modeling of urban public schools after the culture of prisons, or the recent call by a county prosecutor in Michigan for a law that "could punish parents with jail time for repeatedly missing their children's parent teacher conferences"?(7) As the state is removed from supplying public services, the only relationship the public increasingly has with it is one marked by suspicion and fear. The lesson here is that the rich get rewarded for their bad deeds as made clear in the Bush-Obama bailouts of the too-big-to-fail banking and investment houses of Wall Street, while the middle class and the poor are evicted from their homes under threat of criminal action or threatened with jail time if they don't pay their soaring debts. Fraud in high places becomes an investment opportunity as indicated in the case of Angelo Mozilio, the godfather of subprime mortgages and the former chief executive of Countrywide who managed to pocket $521 million as a result of criminal practices, but was "punished" by the Securities and Exchange Commission by having to pay back only $47.5 million out of his own pocket. Crime truly pays, except for the poor and middle class.(8)

We have become a country in which democracy is no longer a viable dream; rather, it is a living nightmare haunting those who now control the reins of financial power, the media and the Supreme Court. What we are witnessing in the 2010 elections is the triumph of an "argument against politics, or at least against a politics that attempts to govern society in social rather than economic terms."(9) If we are to believe Sharron Angle, Sarah Palin, John A. Boehner, and all the other cheerleaders for free-market fundamentalism, freedom only becomes meaningful when decoupled from any vestige of the social, while most welfare provisions are seen as benefiting those deemed immoral and lazy, if not utterly unworthy. Government responsibility only applies to servicing the defense budget, providing tax relief for the rich and providing handouts for corporations. When used to service the public good, government responsibility is disparaged by being called a form of socialism, a term that no longer has any meaning except to discredit an idea unacceptable to market-driven fundamentalists. At the same time, those who opposed the notion of social provisions and the social state now wrap themselves in the mantle of victims who are being unduly taxed and victimized by a government that is out of control. This is more than the hypocritical mourning of the super rich who somehow have become the primary victims of the Obama government, but also the hard-wired common sense ideology that floods the right-wing pedagogical machines such as Fox News. While it is often pointed out that there is a contradiction among railing against deficits while supporting two wars and supporting tax cuts for the ultra-rich, what is missed in this critique is that there is more at stake here than faulty logic, but also an unabashed support for a politics that despises democracy and welcomes an authoritarian economic system that largely benefits mega-financial corporations and the ultra rich.

One of the most distinctive features of politics in the United States in the last 30 years is the inexorable move away from the promise of equality, human dignity, racial justice and freedom - upon which its conception of democracy rests - to the narrow and stripped-down assumption that equates democracy with market identities, values and social relations. Hollowed out under a regime of politics that celebrates the trinity of privatization, deregulation and financialization, democracy has been replaced by a politics of disposability and a culture of cruelty. Driven by the imperative to accumulate capital and consume at all costs, the current form of casino capitalism rewards those who participate in casino capitalism with the protections of a devalued form of citizenship, while those who can't take part as consumers are seen as "failed" and "ever more disposable."(10) In this scenario, freedom is transformed into its opposite for the vast majority of the population as a small, privileged minority can purchase time, goods, services and security, while the vast majority increasingly are relegated to a life without protections, benefits and support. For those populations considered expendable, redundant and invisible by virtue of their race, class and youth, life becomes increasingly precarious. But if consumerism and an indifference to the common good are the defining features of citizenship under casino capitalism, a galloping inequality and the privileges it brings to powerful corporations and the ultra rich is the ultimate badge of acceptance and success.

Mounting signs of increasing redundancy, dispensability and social death are evident in the depression-level jobless rates in which one in six Americans are either unemployed or underemployed,(11) 44 million live in poverty, one in seven adults receive food stamps and 51 million people are without health insurance.(12) It gets worse. As David DeGraw points out:

we have over 50 million people who need to use food stamps to eat and a stunning 50 percent of U.S. children will use food stamps to eat at some point in their childhoods. Approximately 20,000 people are added to this total every day. In 2009, one out of five U.S. households didn't have enough money to buy food. In households with children, this number rose to 24 percent, as the hunger rate among U.S. citizens has now reached an all-time high.... Over five million U.S. families have already lost their homes, in total 13 million U.S. families are expected to lose their home by 2014, with 25 percent of current mortgages underwater.... Every day 10,000 U.S. homes enter foreclosure. Statistics show that an increasing number of these people are not finding shelter elsewhere, there are now over 3 million homeless Americans and the fastest-growing segment of the homeless population is single parents with children.(13)

Such statistics give new meaning to the slogan "live free or die." The cost of this politics of disposability becomes clear in heartbreaking stories about 15.5 million young people who are living in poverty, dropping out of school in record numbers, suffer serious health problems that go untreated, or literally end up in prison. What advocates of casino capitalism ignore in their homage to market relations and individual responsibility as the essence of our national spirit are the growing numbers of bodies, the mounting despair, the ever-growing forms of social death and disposability under a regime of market-driven discourses and policies that support the irrational belief that the market can solve all problems. The collateral damage that reveals the lie of this allegedly unassailable form of common sense can be glimpsed in the fate of millions who are now homeless, out of work, out of luck and living in despair, as well as in the moral vacuum that has overtaken a country awash in the idiocy of celebrity culture, game shows and a dominant media that shamelessly refused to exercise any sense of political and moral accountability. Instead of focusing on the uncomfortable truths that emerge daily in the expanding narratives of despair and neglect facing millions of families caught in the grip of economic devastation, the country is treated daily to an infomercial provided by the ultra rich and aired through all the channels of the official cultural apparatus, urging us to mimic the very values that brought us the current recession and the ongoing human hardships it has produced.

Social and political death becomes the fate of more and more people just as the current crop of right-wing politicians and anti-public intellectuals argue that social problems can only be solved through the depoliticizing vocabularies of the therapeutic and emotional, often enmeshed in the rigid political and moral certainties of bigotry, intolerance, racism, ideological purity and religious fundamentalism. The language, values and policies of casino capitalism have become the template for solving all of society's problems. As such, it employs the first rule of politics in which power becomes invisible and the root causes of our social, economic and political problems are simply canceled out through a shameless appeal to the discourse of self-help, personal responsibility and self-reliance, operating under the conceit of neutrality and efficiency, while effectively erasing everything required both to understand the demands of responsible citizenship and to address the major social issues of our time. As Frank Rich points out, casino capitalism has done more than create an economic crisis, it also offers a future for the United States in which an obscene inequality and economic unfairness drive young people into careers in which getting rich is their only motivation, public services collapse and a economically stressed middle class loses faith in government and turns its back on any sacrifice in favor of expanding the public good.(14) Young people are increasingly presented with a future in which there is no language of democracy, justice, solidarity and the public good. Instead, they offered a language that maximizes self interest, undermines any shared sense of purpose and devalues public service. Under such conditions the formative culture necessary for critical citizens and a vibrant democracy collapses into a Hobbesian world in which the competitive, self-absorbed, unattached, materialistic individual consumer is the only meaningful category of citizenship.

There are many commentators who believe this upcoming election is a referendum on the policies of Barack Obama and they are partly right. But more importantly, this election is a referendum on the call to do away with democracy once and for all, to make the politics of disposability a central feature of everyday life and to usher in a form of casino capitalism in which the democratic state is replaced by the corporate state. Obama's failure of nerve now seems beside the point. His deplorable record has less to do with bailing out the rich, undermining crucial civil liberties and reinforcing the permanent war policies of the United States than with losing touch with any vestige of moral and civic courage in confronting myriad attacks on democratic life. His is the pathetic legacy of squandered public faith and support that ushered him into office; he could have drawn upon it to make power accountable while mobilizing those populations for whom democracy has always been more of an ideal than a reality. The collateral damage we now suffer is not only the frightening image of a soon to be governing party that embraces enthusiastically all of the sordid elements of casino capitalism, but one that will do its best to put democracy to rest once and for all.

Footnotes:

1. Mike Davis and Daniel Bertrand Monk, "Introduction," Evil Paradises (New York: The New Press, 2007), p. ix. On the return of the Gilded Age, see Michael McHugh, "The Second Gilded Age: The Great Reaction in the United States," 1973-2001 (Lanham: University Press of America, 2006).
2. Louis Uchitelle, "The Richest of the Rich, Proud of new Gilded Age," The New York Times (July 15, 2007). Online here.
3. Jacques Rancière, "Hatred of Democracy" (London: Verso, 2006); Henry A. Giroux, "The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex" (Boulder: Paradigm, 2007); Henry A. Giroux, "Against the Terror of Neoliberalism" (Boulder, Paradigm, 2008); Henry A. Giroux, "Politics After Hope: Obama and the Crisis of Youth, Race and Democracy" (Boulder, Paragidgm, 2010).
4. See Lee Fang, "Memo: Health Insurance, Banking, Oil Industries Met with Koch, Chamber, Glenn Beck to Plot 2010 Elections," Think Progress (October 20, 2010). Online here.
5. Terry Eagleton, "Reappraisals: What is the worth of social democracy?" Harper's Magazine, (October 2010), p. 78.
6. Lawrence Grossberg, "Caught in the Crossfire: Kids, Politics and America's Future" (Boulder: Paradigm, 2005), p. 117.
7. Duborah Brunswick, "Prosecutor Proposes Jail Time for Parents Who Miss Teacher Conferrences," CNN.com (October 21, 2010). Online here.
8. See Frank Rich, "What Happened to Change We Can Believe in?" The New York Times (October 23, 2010), P. WK10.
9. Ibid., p. 117
10. Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff, "Millennial Capitalism: First Thoughts on a Second Coming," Public Culture 12: 2 (Duke University Press, 2000), p. 301.
11. Paul Krugman, "Defining Prosperity Down," The New York Times, (August 1, 2010), p. A17.
12. Erik Eckholm, "Poverty Rate Rose Sharply in 2009, Says Census Bureau," The New York Times, (September 16, 2010).
Online here.
13. David DeGraw, "The Economic Elite Have Engendered an Extraordinary Coup, Threatening the Very Existence of the Middle Class," Alter Net, (February 15, 2010). Online here.
14. Frank Rich, "What Happened to Change We Can Believe in?" The New York Times (October 23, 2010), P. WK10.

George Carlin: The Sheer Fearlessness of Laughter, 1937-2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/arts/24carlin.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=obituaries&pagewanted=all

All,

George Carlin (1937-2008) one of the most profound, creative, insightful and deeply funny comedians in American history died June 22 at age 71. Satirist, linguist, raconteur, social and cultural critic, actor, political gadfly, atheist, and fierce public advocate and defender of free speech Carlin was, along with fellow comedic legends Lenny Bruce (1926-1966) and Richard Pryor (1940-2005) one of the most iconic and influential artists in modern comedy who, like his fellow highly innovative contemporaries, revolutionized and fundamentally transformed the very form and content of standup comedy. Possessing a scathing and deadly accurate quick-fire wit as well as a fearlessly perceptive and ruthlessly honest take on human and social behavior and institutions, Carlin was an unsurpassed master of the complexities, ambiguities, and absurdities of language as well as an adroit and very shrewd observer of its liberating and deceptive uses in society. Many of the targets of Carlin’s highly barbed, often furious, and yet sometimes paradoxically gentle and empathetic wit were the ignorant, corrupt, and dishonest mythologies and lies embedded in the endlessly destructive distortions and manipulations of history, religion, and political/cultural ideology. Taking an excoriating and gleeful all-holds- barred approach to the social and cultural questions of race, class, sex, gender, and identity, Carlin not only relentlessly and hilariously attacked all forms of racism, sexism, class domination, and homophobia in his act but he also absolutely refused to let anyone (including himself) off the hook when honing in on the flaws, foibles, pretensions, hypocrisies, idiocies, insecurities, poses, delusions, and deceptions of human beings in general in any given social or historical context. It was this absolute refusal to privilege or cater to the egos and/or bigotries of any one group or individual when making his comedic observations and analyses that made Carlin (again like Pryor, like Bruce) one of the truly most fearless and scathingly honest performers in the history of the demanding art of comedy. Carlin was never afraid to say what he thought or mean what he said in any setting and it was and is this bedrock integrity and foundational sense of independence in harmony with an extraordinary intelligence and a quintessentially blues and Jazz based prophetic understanding and appreciation for the intricacies and demands of experience in all of its many dimensions that made Carlin one of the most important and consistently laugh-out-loud-till-you- can’t-do-anything-but-cry-and-wonder-why comedians to ever rock the mic. To say he and his powerful legacy of public truth telling will be sorely missed yet surely never die as long as the human species can still laugh and simultaneously dig what the laughter means is not only a great understatement but a seemingly absurd paradox that George Carlin would have both understood and happily and derisively laughed at. Thanks for everything Mr. Carlin. You were a straightup genius. You were also, as Miles and many others throughout the globe would say, “a very funny muthafucka.”

Kofi

June 24, 2008 George Carlin, Comic Who Chafed at Society and Its Constraints, Dies at 71 By MEL WATKINS and BRUCE WEBER
New York Times

Correction Appended

George Carlin, whose astringent stand-up comedy made him an heir of Lenny Bruce, who gave voice to an indignant counterculture and assaulted the barricades of censorship on behalf of a generation of comics that followed him, died on Sunday in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 71 and lived in Venice, Calif.

The cause was heart failure, said his publicist, Jeff Abraham. Mr. Carlin, who performed earlier this month at the Orleans hotel in Las Vegas, had a history of heart problems.

“By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth,” read a message on Mr. Carlin’s Web site, GeorgeCarlin.com, and he spent much of his life in a fervent effort to counteract the forces that would have it so. In his always irreverent, often furious social commentary, in his observations of the absurdities of everyday life and language, and in groundbreaking routines like the profane “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” he took aim at what he thought of as the palliating and obfuscating agents of American life — politicians, advertisements, religion, the media and conventional thinking of all stripes.

“If crime fighters fight crime and firefighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight?” he asked in a 1980s routine, taking a jab at the Reagan administration’s defense of the Nicaraguan Contras.

During a career that spanned five decades, Mr. Carlin emerged as one of the most popular, durable, productive and versatile comedians of his era. He evolved from Jerry Seinfeld-like whimsy and a buttoned-down decorum in the ’60s to counterculture hero in the ’70s.

By the ’80s, he was known as a scathing social critic, wringing laughs from the verbal tics of contemporary language like the oxymoron “jumbo shrimp” (and finding another oxymoron in the term “military intelligence”) and poking fun at pervasive national attitudes. He used the ascent of football’s popularity at the expense of the game he loved, baseball, to make the point that societal innocence had been lost forever.

“Baseball is a 19th-century pastoral game,” he said. “Football is a 20th-century technological struggle. Baseball is played on a diamond, in a park. The baseball park! Football is played on a gridiron, in a stadium sometimes called Soldier Field or War Memorial Stadium.”

Through the 1990s and into the 21st century, Mr. Carlin, balding but still pony-tailed, prowled the stage — eyes ablaze with intensity — as the comedy circuit’s most splenetic curmudgeon, raging over the shallowness of a “me first” culture; mocking the infatuation with camcorders, hyphenated names and sneakers with lights on them; lambasting white guys over 10 years old who wear their baseball hats backwards, baby boomers “who went from ‘do your thing’ to ‘just say no’ ” and “from cocaine to Rogaine”; and foes of abortion rights. “How come when it’s us it’s an abortion,” he asked, “and when it’s a chicken it’s an omelet?”

George Denis Carlin was born in New York City on May 12, 1937. His mother, Mary, a secretary, separated from his father when he was an infant, and he grew up with his mother and his older brother, Patrick, on West 121st Street in Manhattan.

“I grew up in New York wanting to be like those funny men in the movies and on the radio,” Mr. Carlin said. “My grandfather, mother and father were gifted verbally, and my mother passed that along to me. She always made sure I was conscious of language and words.”

He dropped out of high school and joined the Air Force, and while stationed in Shreveport, La., he worked as a radio disc jockey. Discharged in 1957, he moved to Boston for a radio announcer’s job, then to Fort Worth, where he was a D.J.

Along the way he met Jack Burns, a newscaster and comedian. They worked together in Fort Worth and Los Angeles, performing on the radio and in clubs and even appearing on “The Tonight Show” with Jack Paar. The comedian Mort Sahl, whose penchant for social commentary Mr. Carlin came to share, dubbed them “a duo of hip wits.”

Still, the Carlin-Burns team was only moderately successful, and, in 1960, Mr. Carlin struck out on his own.

He made his first television solo guest appearance on “The Tonight Show” in 1962, in the interim between Paar’s departure and Johnny Carson’s arrival; the host that night was Mr. Sahl. His second wasn’t until 1965, when he made the first of 29 appearances on “The Merv Griffin Show.”

At that time, he was primarily known for his clever wordplay and reminiscences of his Irish working-class upbringing in New York. But there were intimations of an anti-establishment edge. It surfaced, for example, in a parody of television newscasts, for which he invented characters like Al Sleet, “the “hippy-dippy weatherman”: “Tonight’s forecast: Dark. Continued mostly dark tonight turning to widely scattered light in the morning.”

Mr. Carlin released his first comedy album, “Take-Offs and Put-Ons,” to rave reviews in 1967. He also dabbled in acting, winning a recurring part as Marlo Thomas’s theatrical agent in the 1960s sitcom “That Girl” and a supporting role in the 1968 movie “With Six You Get Eggroll.” He made more than 80 major television appearances during that time, including on the Ed Sullivan Show and Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show”; he was also regularly featured at nightclubs in New York and Las Vegas.

He was one of America’s most popular comedians, but as the convulsive decade of 1960s ended, he’d had enough of what he considered a dinky and hollow success.

“I was entertaining the fathers and the mothers of the people I sympathized with, and in some cases associated with, and whose point of view I shared,” he recalled later, as quoted in the book “Going Too Far” by Tony Hendra (Doubleday, 1987). “I was a traitor, in so many words. I was living a lie.”

In 1970, Mr. Carlin staged a remarkable reversal of field, discarding his suit and tie, as well as the relatively conventional and clean-cut material that had catapulted him to the top. He reinvented himself, emerging with a beard, long hair, jeans and a routine steeped in drugs and insolence. A backlash followed; in one famous incident, he was advised to leave town when an angry audience threatened him at the Playboy Club in Lake Geneva, Wis., for joking about the Vietnam War. Afterward, he temporarily abandoned nightclubs for coffee houses and colleges, where he found a younger, hipper audience that was more attuned to both his new image and his material.

By 1972, when he released his second album, “FM & AM,” his star was again on the rise. The album, which won a Grammy Award as best comedy recording, combined older material with his newer, more acerbic routines.

One, from “Class Clown,” Mr. Carlin’s third album, became part of his “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” with its rhythmic recitation of obscenities. It was broadcast on the New York radio station WBAI. Acting on a complaint about the broadcast, the Federal Communications Commission issued an order prohibiting the words as “indecent.” In 1978, the Supreme Court upheld the order, establishing a decency standard that remains in effect; it ensnared Howard Stern in 2005, precipitating his move to satellite radio.

Mr. Carlin refused to drop the bit and was arrested several times after reciting it onstage.

By the mid-’70s, like his comic predecessor Lenny Bruce and the fast-rising Richard Pryor, Mr. Carlin had emerged as a cultural renegade. In addition to his jests about religion and politics, he talked about using drugs, including LSD and peyote; he kicked cocaine, he said, not for moral or legal reasons but because he found “far more pain in the deal than pleasure.”

Three of Mr. Carlin’s comedy albums of the 1970’s — “Class Clown,” “Occupation: Foole” and “An Evening With Wally Lambo” — sold more than a million copies. In 1975, he was chosen to host the first episode of the late-night comedy show “Saturday Night Live.” And two years later, he found the perfect platform for his stinging and cerebral, if sometimes off-color, humor in the fledgling world of cable television: the first of his 14 HBO comedy specials, “George Carlin at U.S.C.” was aired in 1977, the last, “George Carlin: It’s Bad for Ya,” in March.

During the course of his career, Mr. Carlin overcame numerous personal trials. His early arrests for obscenity (all of which were dismissed) and his problem with cocaine were the most publicized. But he also weathered serious tax problems, a heart attack and two open-heart surgeries; his health problems cost him five years of productivity between 1977 and 1982. Though he had been able to taper his cocaine use on his own, he said, he continued to abuse alcohol and also became addicted to Vicodin. In December 2004 he entered a rehabilitation center.

“Stand-up is the centerpiece of my life, my business, my art, my survival and my way of being,” Mr. Carlin once told an interviewer. And while it did always take center stage in his career, Mr. Carlin also acted in films, among them “Car Wash” (1976), “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” (1989), “The Prince of Tides” (1991), and “Dogma” (1999).

He also wrote books, expansions on his comedy routines, including “Brain Droppings” (1997), “Napalm & Silly Putty (2001) and “When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?” (2004), all published by Hyperion. A 1994 sitcom, “The George Carlin Show,” lasted a single season. He also did a stint narrating the children’s television show “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends.”

Mr. Carlin won a total of four Grammy Awards. He was recently named the recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, which he was to receive in November at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. The Kennedy Center said Monday that the prize would be given posthumously and that the evening would be a tribute to his life and work.

In addition to his brother, Patrick, Mr. Carlin is survived by his wife, Sally Wade, and a daughter, Kelly Carlin McCall. His first wife, Brenda Hosbrook, died in 1997.

Mr. Carlin’s most recent work was especially contentious, even bitter, full of ranting against the stupid, the fat, the docile. But he defended the material, insisting that his comedy had always been driven by an intolerance for the shortcomings of humanity and society.

“Scratch any cynic,” he said, “and you’ll find a disappointed idealist.”

Anahad O’Connor contributed reporting.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: June 25, 2008

Because of an editing error, an obituary on Tuesday about the comedian George Carlin misstated the location of the Playboy Club where he angered an audience by joking about the Vietnam War. It was Lake Geneva, Wis. (There is no town named Lake Geneva in New York.)

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company


George Carlin: A Funny Man in an Unfunny World By Amy Goodman
King Features Syndicate Posted on June 26, 2008, Printed on June 28, 2008

http://www.alternet.org/story/89551/

The world lost one of its great comedians this week with the death at age 71 of George Carlin. Carlin had a career as a stand-up comic that spanned a half-century, in which he continually broke new ground, targeting those in power with his wit and genius. He impacted our culture, our media and our nation with a stream of material that skewered institutions of the left and right, from government to business and the church. He released 22 comedy albums, earning him five Emmy nominations and winning four Grammys. He was the first guest host of "Saturday Night Live," in 1975, and appeared on "The Tonight Show" 130 times. He starred in 14 HBO specials and authored three best-selling books. He also left an indelible mark on the radio station where I got my start in broadcast journalism, Pacifica station WBAI 99.5 FM in New York City.

On Oct. 30, 1973, WBAI broadcast Carlin's "Filthy Words" routine. Carlin wrote on his Web site, georgecarlin.com: "Lone professional moralist complains to FCC which issues a Declaratory Order against station. Station goes to court." That court battle would last five years, end at the U.S. Supreme Court and set the standard for broadcast indecency laws that are hotly debated to this day. It was neither accident nor coincidence that this iconoclastic comic would have some of his most controversial material broadcast over Pacifica Radio's WBAI. The Pacifica Network was founded in Berkeley, Calif., in 1949, with KPFA as the first truly listener-sponsored radio station.

Back then, radio was so overwhelmingly commercial that Pacifica founder Lew Hill and others found it worthless. As Hill wrote in his "Theory of Listener Sponsored Radio," "If we want an improvement in radio, the basic situation of broadcasting must be such that artists and thinkers have a place to work -- with freedom."

On July 3, 1978, the Supreme Court ruled that the Federal Communications Commission could punish WBAI for its broadcast of Carlin's routine, arguing that words relating to sex or excretion (i.e., piss) when children might be listening were prohibited. Supreme Court Justices William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall dissented, noting the court's "depressing inability to appreciate that in our land of cultural pluralism, there are many who think, act, and talk differently from the Members of this Court, and who do not share their fragile sensibilities." Remarkably, 30 years later, the same issues are before a decidedly more conservative Supreme Court.

Recent episodes of "fleeting expletives" from the mouths of celebrities like Bono, Cher and Nicole Richie have prompted the FCC to seek enhanced power to punish broadcasters. George Carlin pointed out what in our society was truly indecent: the behavior of the powerful.

Yes, he spiced his delivery with expletives. He was angry. He, like Pacifica, gave voice to essential, dissident perspectives that have been almost entirely blocked from mainstream media. He said: "We were founded on a very basic double standard. This country was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free. Am I right? A group of slave owners who wanted to be free, so they killed a lot of white English people in order to continue owning their black African people, so they could wipe out the rest of the red Indian people and move west and steal the rest of the land from the brown Mexican people, giving them a place to take off and drop their nuclear weapons on the yellow Japanese people. You know what the motto of this country ought to be? You give us a color, we'll wipe it out."
His prolific output will continue to inspire for generations to come.

Amy Goodman is the host of the nationally syndicated radio news program, Democracy Now!
© 2008 King Features Syndicate All rights reserved
.View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/89551/


HBO plans encores programs of George Carlin comedy Tue Jun 24, 2008

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - In a tribute to irreverent comedian George Carlin who died this week, cable television network HBO said on Tuesday that it will air encore specials of more than 30 years of his comedy shows starting this week.

Carlin began giving performances on HBO as far back as 1977, almost since the network's inception, and the network will air the first "George Carlin at USC" as well as the final "It's Bad for Ya."

Sister network HBO2 will show 11 of his specials over two nights.

"Because HBO has had such a long and close relationship with George Carlin, his passing is like losing one of our own," HBO Entertainment Senior Vice President Nancy Geller said in a statement. "No performer was more important to helping our network define itself in its early years."

Carlin was 71 years-old when he died of heart failure on Sunday in a Los Angeles-area hospital. He had enthralled the country for nearly 50 years with his provocative humor.

In 1978, a radio broadcast of Carlin's routine "Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television," fueled a battle with the Federal Communications Commission over indecent language on U.S. airwaves.

The U.S. Supreme Court later ruled that Carlin had used words that were indecent, and that the FCC could ban them from being aired when children were listening.

Still, Carlin continued with his no-holds-barred style of comedy that inspired several generations of young comedians to push the boundaries of what audiences considered funny.

"(No) performer was more committed to the ideal of freedom of speech, a principle he embodied for the 50 years he performed with his trademark wit," Geller said.

Apart from presenting 14 shows on HBO, Carlin wrote three best-selling books, won four Grammy Awards, and recorded 22 comedy albums.

The John F. Kennedy Center recently announced Carlin the winner of the prestigious Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, which he was to receive in November this year.

Reuters/Nielsen



Award-winning comedian George Carlin dies
CNN.com
June 23, 2008

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- George Carlin, the influential comedian whose routines used profanity, scatology and absurdity to point out the silliness and hypocrisy of human life, has died. He was 71.

George Carlin, here in 2007, kept up a busy schedule, performing as recently as last weekend in Las Vegas.

Carlin, who had a history of heart trouble, died of heart failure Sunday, according to publicist Jeff Abraham. Carlin went to St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica on Sunday afternoon, complaining of chest pain, and died at 5:55 p.m. PT.

Carlin performed as recently as last weekend at the Orleans Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, and maintained a busy performing schedule, which included regular TV specials for HBO.

"He was a genius and I will miss him dearly," Jack Burns, who was the other half of a comedy duo with Carlin in the early 1960s, told The Associated Press.

Carlin was "a hugely influential force in stand-up comedy. He had an amazing mind, and his humor was brave, and always challenging us to look at ourselves and question our belief systems, while being incredibly entertaining. He was one of the greats," actor and comedian Ben Stiller said in a statement. Slideshow: The life of George Carlin »

Carlin was often quoted, his best lines traded like baseball cards. "Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?" began one famous routine. Another pointed out the differences between the pastoral game of baseball and the militaristic game of football: "Baseball is played on a diamond, in a park. The baseball park! Football is played on a gridiron, in a stadium, sometimes called Soldier Field or War Memorial Stadium."

Then there were the non sequiturs: "The bigger they are, the worse they smell," he observed. Watch Carlin in action »

He filled three best-selling books, more than 20 record albums and countless television appearances with his material. Time.com: How Carlin changed comedy

He appreciated the impact his words made on fans.

"These are nice additional merit badges that you earn if you've left a mark on a person or on some people," he told CNN.com in 2004. "I'd say it's flattering, but flattery implies insincerity, so I call it a compliment."

Carlin was probably best known for a routine that began, "I was thinking about the curse words and the swear words, the cuss words and the words that you can't say." It was a monologue, known as "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television," that got Carlin arrested and eventually led to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The "Seven Dirty Words" bit prompted a landmark indecency case after New York's WBAI-FM radio aired it in 1973.

The case was appealed to the Supreme Court, which ruled 5-4 that the sketch was "indecent but not obscene," giving the Federal Communications Commission broad leeway to determine what constituted indecency on the airwaves.

"So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I'm perversely kind of proud of," Carlin said. "In the context of that era, it was daring.

"It just sounds like a very self-serving kind of word. I don't want to go around describing myself as a 'groundbreaker' or a 'difference-maker' because I'm not and I wasn't," he said. "But I contributed to people who were saying things that weren't supposed to be said." Watch the impact of Carlin's seven dirty words routine »

In November, Carlin was slated to receive the 2008 Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, given by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

"In his lengthy career as a comedian, writer and actor, George Carlin has not only made us laugh, but he makes us think," Kennedy Center Chairman Stephen Schwarzman said in a statement. "His influence on the next generation of comics has been far-reaching."

In a typically wry response, Carlin said, "Thank you, Mr. Twain. Have your people call my people." Watch an appreciation of Carlin »

Carlin was born on May 12, 1937, in New York. He dropped out of high school in the ninth grade and joined the Air Force, where his misfit ways continued -- he received three courts-martial and several punishments.

After leaving the military, he spent a few years in radio, where he met Burns. In 1960, the pair left to pursue a comedy career in Los Angeles. Burns told the AP that the Carlin of those years was "fairly conservative," but things changed when the two saw Lenny Bruce in the early '60s.

"It was an epiphany for George," Burns told the AP. "The comedy we were doing at the time wasn't exactly groundbreaking, and George knew then that he wanted to go in a different direction."

Carlin remembered a similar feeling, he told CNN.com.

"[His career] represented a lot of such honesty on the stage, the willingness to confront a lot of sacred cows and expose them," he said of Bruce. "He did it with a great deal of irreverence and with a lot of brilliance."

Carlin went solo in 1962. For most of the decade, he was a conservative-looking presence: clean-shaven, attired in jacket and tie, making his amused observations to audiences on "The Tonight Show" and "The Ed Sullivan Show."

But as the times changed, so did Carlin. He let his hair down, grew a beard and dressed in jeans and tie-dyed T-shirts. It was this Carlin who became a hit with college audiences in the early '70s and made such albums as "FM & AM" and "Occupation: Foole."

Carlin hosted the first broadcast of "Saturday Night Live" in October 1975.
He also appeared in movies, including "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" (1989), Kevin Smith's "Dogma" (1999) and "Cars" (2006). For the latter, he was the voice of Fillmore, the Volkswagen bus.

He starred as a cabdriver in his own sitcom, "The George Carlin Show," which ran from 1993 to 1995. He also played the character of Mr. Conductor on the PBS series "Shining Time Station" and lent his voice to two episodes of "The Simpsons."

Carlin was blunt about his own struggles. He suffered several heart attacks, one at Dodger Stadium during a baseball game. He also underwent treatment for drug and alcohol abuse.

He was relentlessly amused by humanity -- in one of his most famous lines, he pointed out that "if you're born in this world you're given a ticket to the freak show. If you're born in America, you're given a front-row seat" -- but refused to consider himself a cynic. He preferred "disappointed idealist."

It all went into his comedy. He was fascinated by language and euphemism, noting that "there's a reluctance to confront reality and a desire to soften unpleasant realities." In a different life, he said, he may have been a teacher.

Which he was, anyway.



"Part of what my impulse is with things I've said or done, I think it is an attempt to demystify these things, to take them out of the realm of the forbidden and the disgusting and the off-base, and to at least bring them into the discussion," he told CNN.com.

He is survived by his wife, Sally Wade; daughter Kelly Carlin McCall; son-in-law Bob McCall; brother Patrick Carlin; and sister-in-law Marlene Carlin. Carlin's first wife, Brenda, died in 1997.