Excerpt from interview with George Carlin Me: Youre known as a very liberal comic. Are you trying to change peoples political views when you go out there? Do you have an underlying agenda? George: No. First of all, Im not liberal. Im just about (being) anti-United States. I dont like the way this country operates. I think weve ruined this place. And I think its largely because of businessmen. And businessmen are not liberals. So if that makes me a liberal, then thats just an association. Its not a choice. ... I do not care about changing anybody. Nobody. I go out there to show the rest of the Americans how badly theyre doing. This country has been, for about 180 years now, badly mishandled. And its been in the wrong hands. Its been in the hands of the business interests. And a lot of the beauty of this country has been shattered by them. The physical beauty and the kind of institutional beauty that was originally built into this place - this experiment, this magnificent experiment in democracy is just being shredded to pieces by these right-wing Christians, the Ashcroft branch of Republicanism. (Theyre) just shredding the rest of the Bill of Rights which hadnt been shredded already. Theyd been doing a pretty good job on it up until then, anyway. Me: Do you feel like this country has progressed any way, shape or form in the past 20 years? George: Everybodys got more jet skis and Dustbusters now and sneakers with lights in them. Theyve got more cheese on their thing that they buy. They get double helpings. See, Americans measure all their progress in the wrong way. They measure by quantity and by gizmos and toys. And not by quality and by things that are important. The most interesting thing to me is that the things that people would seem to have the most right to have - that is to say health, food, shelter and a job - are the things that are last on the list. To me, that is fundamental. Those are the things humans most need to function, and we have placed them at the bottom of the list. So I think that says a lot about national character and priorities.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Nov 2014 22:51:19 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015