Dear All Ersatz George Carlins,
On Sunday, June 22, 2008, America lost not only a comedian, but possibly the last public figure who was not afraid to tell the truth: bluntly, plainly, and without hesitation. His bits were more than just a gimmick or angry tirades against an "unjust" society, he spoke from and bared his soul (although he thought such a concept to be ludicrous) for an admiring public. His thirteen HBO comedy specials is a record that is a mere pipe dream for today's comics, and his books, compact discs, and DVD sales have reached well over the ten million dollar mark. In essence, George Carlin was a person who came up through "the system," became anathema to the system, and used that same system to profit while still assailing it for its incongruousness and hypocrisies. He was a regular on both Ed Sullivan's program and the Tonight Show when it was still hosted by Jack Paar in the 1960s. He wore a suit and tie - since doffed in favor of turtlenecks, bell bottoms, collared shirts, long-sleeved shirts, or jeans - and was known by his fans as the clean-cut, funny wordsmith from New York. Carlin, however, felt alienated from his fan base and changed with the times Mr. Bob Dylan intuitively sung about. He grew out his hair and beard, donned the abovementioned items of clothing, and began steering his comedic materials towards topics other comics of the time wouldn't dare go near: Vietnam, the counterculture, drugs, the government, and, perhaps most famously, obscenity.
This, however, is not all Mr. Carlin should be remembered for - the now-famous, once-infamous, 1972 Supreme Court ruling "The Seven Dirty Words You Can't Say on Television." Sure, it is perhaps the most well-known and beloved acts he ever performed, but to myopically look at the life of a legend and spend hours discussing one fifteen minute bit is a grave injustice. Now is not the time for all you choosing to pay homage to one of the greatest comics of time to personally crusade in his honor. Even worse, Carlin-lovers of the blogosphere, is trying to honor George Carlin's legacy by attempting to leave one of your own. Now, I am sure it is tributary more than profiteering, but it is, nonetheless, disgraceful and unfunny. The man already capitalized on the ridiculousness of governmental censorship - for you to claim his landmark work as your own is downright blasphemy. Take Linda Caroll's hilariously unfunny "Seven Words You Can't Say in E-Mail. No obligation? Free sample? Oh Linda, you're so edgy, I don't think even Fox would want to run the risk of publishing your hip work. Generally, I find cracked.com to be a great "lists" website and much of the writing is at a level more advanced than half the crap that passes for written entertainment these days. Still, I didn't think they would have to tackle "an updated version" of Carlin's work for a laugh that doesn't really come.
These are the tributes that aren't. Attempting to modernize an erstwhile comic's material is one thing... but George Carlin is not an erstwhile comic; he's a rabble-rouser, (he honestly rouses the rabble) a pioneer, a voice for those too meek or timid to speak out, a role model, a man who has more knowledge of the English language than many of today's writers, and a man who spoke out against not simply censorship and constant bowdlerization, but injustice, war, death, drugs, and life in general. George Carlin should be idolized for what he is and what he did, not for fifteen minutes in his life... to not see that is to completely miss the point of what he stood for most: integrity.
Yours truly,
Sean McGrath
*George Carlin, you will be missed, and not just for the humor you bestowed upon so many and the laughs that continue to come even when you aren't around to personally give them, but for the way you composed yourself, for the intelligence you had, and for the influence you held over so many people - comedians or not. Your brand of humor is what so many strive for but very few achieve. You, sir, are without counterpart, unrivaled in your unique outlook on life. Thank you for the opportunity to have watched you live, and for the opportunity to have watched you live.*
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Friday, June 20, 2008
A Response to America's Proponents of Offshore Drilling
From Connie Counts of Coeburn, VA: Fox News was showing footage of people in Venezuela standing up to Hugo Chavez and his spy bill. In this bill were provisions for neighbors to be jailed if they didn’t tell on each other. The streets were filled with dissenters as far as could be seen. Chavez decided to rescind the law.
It is time the American people stood up to Congress because of its stupidity. We could have prevented the oil crisis if Congress had not been so obstructive to the president’s agenda. The bill on drilling oil should have been passed in 2001. We would be independent from foreign oil. Congress cares more about its hatred of the president than for the welfare of our nation.
In Venezuela, the price of gas is 12 cents a gallon. There also are very low prices in the Middle East. Hugo Chavez, Castro and Ahmedinejad have teamed up to wreck our economy. They are succeeding with the help of Congress.
John McCain criticized the president over Katrina. The president stood before the nation and declared a state of emergency for the Gulf Coast on Saturday afternoon. The Category 5 hurricane hit in the wee hours on Monday. The governor said she didn’t want federal aid; she wanted Bill Clinton’s FEMA team. Florida had just been through four consecutive hurricanes before Katrina struck. Louisiana now has a new governor.
My two grandsons have more knowledge of the problems of this nation than any of the candidates. They have nothing but rhetoric.
Gas prices will not get any better unless we drill and build refineries and ignore the EPA. We have to put God first. He controls the climate, not the politicians.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is a response to the American people who, like, Connie Counts of Coeburn, VA, who foolishly believes that off-shore drilling is the panacea to our economic woes:
The oil crisis was continued, not by a Democratic Congress dissenting with a hawkish president, but by the initial invasion of Iraq and the attempts to control the oil fields. It was started in the 1970s when the United States removed a secular, but non-western dictator, named Shah Pahlevi, in Iran, and replaced him with the despotic, but western-friendly, Ayatollah Khomeni. Khomeni, according to many, sold out his people and their resources to America, increasing much of the hatred they have for us today. Compounded upon that egregious blunder is the burgeoning demand for worldwide oil - especially by China and India - that siphons the Middle Eastern shipment to the U.S. causing supply to remain lower than usual. Additionally, with futures speculation on oil a legal loophole thanks to the so-called "Enron loophole" passed by an overwhelmingly Republican Congress in 2000, traders wanting the price of oil to increase for their own profits are going to invest millions upon millions of dollars into the industry to continue to raise prices. Finally, with Big Oil lobbyists fighting and pressuring an increasingly timid Congress to shoot down bills investing millions of dollars into new-energy technologies, the dependency on foriegn oil has never been greater.
Still, it is foolish to think that opening up our petroleum reserves and drilling in wildlife refuges is going to have a positive outcome for this country. The average money saved by each American by 2017 if we were to open up every single area to production and start shipping the oil immediately would be 3.7 cents. Read that again: 3.7 cents in 10 years. Why? It takes years to bring oil wells online, and even more time to begin the actual process of drilling. With all of the shipyards that build platforms - a two to three year endeavor - all booked up, it would take significantly longer, and may end up costing you more at the pump. How do you think the government is going to pay for all this new equipment?
Ms. Counts, your grandsons may have a greater knowledge of the problem than either of the two candidates, but if you are simply spouting off their ideas and mixing in some of your own beliefs, it's clear that your combined knowledge of solutions is nil. Barack Obama wants to end this country's dependency on foreign oil and is committed to investing in new, American-made, technologies - John McCain is, as you correctly point out, hype and rhetoric, who doesn't know what he wants. As recent as three weeks ago, John McCain, at a Greenvale, Wisconsin campaign stop, had this message about off-shore drilling to the audience, "[W]ith those resources, which would take years to develop, you would only postpone or temporarily relieve our dependency on fossil fuels," McCain said when asked about offshore drilling. "We are going to have to go to alternative energy, and the exploitation of existing reserves of oil, natural gas, even coal, and we can develop clean coal technology, are all great things. But we also have to devote our efforts, in my view, to alternative energy sources, which is the ultimate answer to our long-term energy needs, and we need it sooner rather than later." That was three weeks ago.
Lastly, Ms. Counts, if you are ludicrously suggesting that God, rather than wind patterns, geographical location, and atmosphere control climate, I implore you to do further research on this topic.
Hugs and kisses,
Sean McGrath
It is time the American people stood up to Congress because of its stupidity. We could have prevented the oil crisis if Congress had not been so obstructive to the president’s agenda. The bill on drilling oil should have been passed in 2001. We would be independent from foreign oil. Congress cares more about its hatred of the president than for the welfare of our nation.
In Venezuela, the price of gas is 12 cents a gallon. There also are very low prices in the Middle East. Hugo Chavez, Castro and Ahmedinejad have teamed up to wreck our economy. They are succeeding with the help of Congress.
John McCain criticized the president over Katrina. The president stood before the nation and declared a state of emergency for the Gulf Coast on Saturday afternoon. The Category 5 hurricane hit in the wee hours on Monday. The governor said she didn’t want federal aid; she wanted Bill Clinton’s FEMA team. Florida had just been through four consecutive hurricanes before Katrina struck. Louisiana now has a new governor.
My two grandsons have more knowledge of the problems of this nation than any of the candidates. They have nothing but rhetoric.
Gas prices will not get any better unless we drill and build refineries and ignore the EPA. We have to put God first. He controls the climate, not the politicians.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is a response to the American people who, like, Connie Counts of Coeburn, VA, who foolishly believes that off-shore drilling is the panacea to our economic woes:
The oil crisis was continued, not by a Democratic Congress dissenting with a hawkish president, but by the initial invasion of Iraq and the attempts to control the oil fields. It was started in the 1970s when the United States removed a secular, but non-western dictator, named Shah Pahlevi, in Iran, and replaced him with the despotic, but western-friendly, Ayatollah Khomeni. Khomeni, according to many, sold out his people and their resources to America, increasing much of the hatred they have for us today. Compounded upon that egregious blunder is the burgeoning demand for worldwide oil - especially by China and India - that siphons the Middle Eastern shipment to the U.S. causing supply to remain lower than usual. Additionally, with futures speculation on oil a legal loophole thanks to the so-called "Enron loophole" passed by an overwhelmingly Republican Congress in 2000, traders wanting the price of oil to increase for their own profits are going to invest millions upon millions of dollars into the industry to continue to raise prices. Finally, with Big Oil lobbyists fighting and pressuring an increasingly timid Congress to shoot down bills investing millions of dollars into new-energy technologies, the dependency on foriegn oil has never been greater.
Still, it is foolish to think that opening up our petroleum reserves and drilling in wildlife refuges is going to have a positive outcome for this country. The average money saved by each American by 2017 if we were to open up every single area to production and start shipping the oil immediately would be 3.7 cents. Read that again: 3.7 cents in 10 years. Why? It takes years to bring oil wells online, and even more time to begin the actual process of drilling. With all of the shipyards that build platforms - a two to three year endeavor - all booked up, it would take significantly longer, and may end up costing you more at the pump. How do you think the government is going to pay for all this new equipment?
Ms. Counts, your grandsons may have a greater knowledge of the problem than either of the two candidates, but if you are simply spouting off their ideas and mixing in some of your own beliefs, it's clear that your combined knowledge of solutions is nil. Barack Obama wants to end this country's dependency on foreign oil and is committed to investing in new, American-made, technologies - John McCain is, as you correctly point out, hype and rhetoric, who doesn't know what he wants. As recent as three weeks ago, John McCain, at a Greenvale, Wisconsin campaign stop, had this message about off-shore drilling to the audience, "[W]ith those resources, which would take years to develop, you would only postpone or temporarily relieve our dependency on fossil fuels," McCain said when asked about offshore drilling. "We are going to have to go to alternative energy, and the exploitation of existing reserves of oil, natural gas, even coal, and we can develop clean coal technology, are all great things. But we also have to devote our efforts, in my view, to alternative energy sources, which is the ultimate answer to our long-term energy needs, and we need it sooner rather than later." That was three weeks ago.
Lastly, Ms. Counts, if you are ludicrously suggesting that God, rather than wind patterns, geographical location, and atmosphere control climate, I implore you to do further research on this topic.
Hugs and kisses,
Sean McGrath
Thursday, June 19, 2008
An Open Letter to America's Automotive Industry
Dear America's Automotive Industry,
Stop. Please, just stop it already. With the price of gas soaring and no real end in sight, your ostentatious and misleading bravado undermines the average American consumer. The economy has been in a downturn since the end of 2007, families are struggling now, more than ever, to put rice on the table, and the usage of ethanol-based biofuels is the hot topic of the moment... so what do you and those of your ilk do? Show commercials that promote the usage of those same biofuels that helped to spur this recession in the first place. That, however, does not raise my ire as much as your biggest transgression: the liberal and unrelenting usage of the term "fuel efficient." It is, at best, laughable, and at worst, deceptive and harmful.
Back in 1973, Honda Motor Company introduced America to the two-door Civic coupe. It was the first vehicle to meet the standards of the 1970 Clean Air Act and obtained a remarkable forty miles per gallon. It was hailed by many as the standard-bearer for future cars, and many Americans rushed out to pay $2,200 for this upstart model. Considering that in that same year, OPEC had cut production to the United States directly creating gas rationing, shortages, and lines for petroleum stretching miles in either direction, forty miles per gallon meant that even though gas was at a hitherto high of 55 cents (the horror! *Adjusted for inflation, $.55 is roughly equivalent to $3.07 per gallon*) these ridiculously long queues could be bypassed with greater frequency. Think about this for a second: thirty-five years ago, Honda was touting a car that has since become the most purchased car in the world, that was able to achieve forty miles per gallon. Today, however, it would seem to any unknowing observer that we are awash in fuel-efficient vehicles: Kia, you have launched this admittedly clever commercial that exalts your Spectra for its "fuel-efficient" thirty-two highway miles per gallon (which means that city mileage is about twenty-five) - eight less than the original Honda Civic. Hyundai, you are developing fuel-cell technology as we speak, but it does not excuse you from this abomination in which you claim YOUR thirty-two miles per gallon as, yet again, "fuel efficient." Everywhere I checked, there was another car company claiming that their 22 miles per gallon car was "fuel efficient." That term seems to be just another phrase used by people to make them feel good and informed - like "sustainability" or "health-conscious."
I understand that in order to peddle your product, you must appeal to the consumer, and right now, gas prices are the hot item. But please don't insult the intelligence of those bright enough to realize that 28 miles per gallon is hardly fuel efficient for 1973 let alone 2008. Sure, America's dependence on foreign oil does not seem like it is going to wane any time soon, and the off-shore drilling that many in your cavalcade are proponents of will save the average American consumer 3.5 cents per gallon by 2017. It is time for the lot of you to get together and say, "Hey, the higher gas prices rise, the worse our sales are going to be. Hell, people are paying $8,000 for 1991 Geo Metros because they get 41 miles per gallon, why would they want to 'lease a [17 mpg highway] 2008 Lincoln Navigator for only $339/month? Let us promote policies that are in our customer's best interests, not the oil companies who just received contracts to operate in Iraq." You won't do it, though. Your hydrogen cars, water vehicles, and electric jalopies will take back seat to the slew of "fuel-efficient" automobiles sitting in your warehouses. Until you, the car companies of America begin to show real progress towards an energy-independent future, the American public will be at the mercy of big oil... at least until the reserves are depleted. Take charge, stop the pandering, stop the deceit, and most of all, stop using buzzwords... they're annoying.
With love,
Sean
Stop. Please, just stop it already. With the price of gas soaring and no real end in sight, your ostentatious and misleading bravado undermines the average American consumer. The economy has been in a downturn since the end of 2007, families are struggling now, more than ever, to put rice on the table, and the usage of ethanol-based biofuels is the hot topic of the moment... so what do you and those of your ilk do? Show commercials that promote the usage of those same biofuels that helped to spur this recession in the first place. That, however, does not raise my ire as much as your biggest transgression: the liberal and unrelenting usage of the term "fuel efficient." It is, at best, laughable, and at worst, deceptive and harmful.
Back in 1973, Honda Motor Company introduced America to the two-door Civic coupe. It was the first vehicle to meet the standards of the 1970 Clean Air Act and obtained a remarkable forty miles per gallon. It was hailed by many as the standard-bearer for future cars, and many Americans rushed out to pay $2,200 for this upstart model. Considering that in that same year, OPEC had cut production to the United States directly creating gas rationing, shortages, and lines for petroleum stretching miles in either direction, forty miles per gallon meant that even though gas was at a hitherto high of 55 cents (the horror! *Adjusted for inflation, $.55 is roughly equivalent to $3.07 per gallon*) these ridiculously long queues could be bypassed with greater frequency. Think about this for a second: thirty-five years ago, Honda was touting a car that has since become the most purchased car in the world, that was able to achieve forty miles per gallon. Today, however, it would seem to any unknowing observer that we are awash in fuel-efficient vehicles: Kia, you have launched this admittedly clever commercial that exalts your Spectra for its "fuel-efficient" thirty-two highway miles per gallon (which means that city mileage is about twenty-five) - eight less than the original Honda Civic. Hyundai, you are developing fuel-cell technology as we speak, but it does not excuse you from this abomination in which you claim YOUR thirty-two miles per gallon as, yet again, "fuel efficient." Everywhere I checked, there was another car company claiming that their 22 miles per gallon car was "fuel efficient." That term seems to be just another phrase used by people to make them feel good and informed - like "sustainability" or "health-conscious."
I understand that in order to peddle your product, you must appeal to the consumer, and right now, gas prices are the hot item. But please don't insult the intelligence of those bright enough to realize that 28 miles per gallon is hardly fuel efficient for 1973 let alone 2008. Sure, America's dependence on foreign oil does not seem like it is going to wane any time soon, and the off-shore drilling that many in your cavalcade are proponents of will save the average American consumer 3.5 cents per gallon by 2017. It is time for the lot of you to get together and say, "Hey, the higher gas prices rise, the worse our sales are going to be. Hell, people are paying $8,000 for 1991 Geo Metros because they get 41 miles per gallon, why would they want to 'lease a [17 mpg highway] 2008 Lincoln Navigator for only $339/month? Let us promote policies that are in our customer's best interests, not the oil companies who just received contracts to operate in Iraq." You won't do it, though. Your hydrogen cars, water vehicles, and electric jalopies will take back seat to the slew of "fuel-efficient" automobiles sitting in your warehouses. Until you, the car companies of America begin to show real progress towards an energy-independent future, the American public will be at the mercy of big oil... at least until the reserves are depleted. Take charge, stop the pandering, stop the deceit, and most of all, stop using buzzwords... they're annoying.
With love,
Sean
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
