George Carlin was an awesome comedian, and more than that he was one who got his laughs by doing what most others would not; by constantly poking the very irritable and VERY dangerous bugbear that is the government. And not simply by pointing out the physical flaws of the politicians, or parodying their harmless but annoying quirks (an easy way to milk the crowd for cheap laughs). That would have been far safer, because that sort of routine does not reveal anything incriminating about them OR the system…
He actually made people laugh with the truth. Entertaining with the truth isn’t just extraordinarily difficult, considering how people tend NOT to be entertained by such serious/boring/depressing issues (though this sort of comedy had the advantage of already being a dirty joke without requiring much effort). It is also very dangerous.
In 1978, the government referred to his “Seven Dirty Words” AKA “Filthy Words” segment in a Supreme Court Case FCC V Pacifica Foundation as an example of profanity- the case was brought because John Douglas’s (who was a member of “Morality in Media“… Seriously, we had one of those?) son had apparently heard George Carlin’s “Filthy Words” routine on an uncensored Pacifica radio broadcast. A “landmark” Supreme Court decision that had defined the power of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over indecent material as applied to broadcasting, the ruling was decided by a vote of five to four that his material was “indecent but not obscene”. This decision formally established indecency regulation in American broadcasting. In follow-up rulings, the Supreme Court established the safe harbor provision that grants broadcasters the right to broadcast indecent (but not obscene) material between the hours of 10 pm and 6 am, apparently because many children will be asleep by then.
This was by no means the first time he had run into trouble with the law… nor the last, as we shall see; he had also been arrested for performing the very same routine in 1972.
According to the documents, it all started back in 1969 when he made an appearance on the Jackie Gleason Show. Carlin apparently pissed off the FBI when he started cracking jokes at the then-FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover.
His feelings hurt, the government apparently had to defend his honor, saying in the documents that Carlin had “referred to the Bureau and the Director in a satirical vein”. It was also “considered to be in very poor taste” and “it was obvious that he was using the prestige of the Bureau and Mr. Hoover to enhance his performance.” That should stop that mean… meany-pants!
And how does a comedian use the “prestige” of an organisation he’s actively insulting? “Hey, the FBI is CLEARLY such a prestigious bunch that I could NOT think of anything funny to say about em. I’ll just praise their brilliance for the entire night…” Your organisation can’t be THAT prestigious if it’s the butt of a joke from which your own chief’s sense of self-worth can’t seem to recover from.
Indeed, it was clear that Hoover took the work of satire as a personal attack, the files twice cite Carlin’s joke “‘I’m J. Edgar Noover. I have just come back from a stakeout with [former Attorney General] Ramsey Clark – that is a cookout in the backyard'” and Hoover had actually gone out to personally respond to “viewers” who were “upset” by Carlin… “viewers” who had apparently cared enough to send a copy of their long-winded defense of the FBI to BOTH the FBI and the Jackie Gleason show. Hoover had also at one point asked “What do we know of Carlin?” though by the end of the document it “seems” as though the FBI had concluded that “no further action be taken”, despite Hoover’s interest.
After Carlin did that show, the people working at the Jackie Gleason show received numerous other anonymous letters condemning his speech against the government… supposedly from “viewers” and fans, but we know better than that seeing as the FBI had sent similar letters to other people whom they saw as a threat to themselves and the establishment including Dr Martin Luther King Junior. Such letters even threatened bodily harm or told the persons of interest to commit suicide.
This kind of faked fan-mail is the old-school basis for the NSA trolls we observe today… a false narrative given legitimacy by an NSA troll pretending to be an “unbiased fan”. This is by no means conspiracy theory, Edward Snowden had long proven the existence of these US-sponsored trolls who are acting against the alternative media, attempting to throw legitimate voices of opposition into disrepute, or suppress us from bothering to take a stand because of all the “hate” we receive.
The rest of the files can be found in the following link, and the request for them had been made by Shawn Musgrave.
sources: Activist Post, Muckrock
This Article (COMEDIAN George Carlin Had A 12-page Long FBI File) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author(CoNN) and AnonHQ.com.
Do you have a PDF of the file?
i probably have 12 page,i miss him so much he was right garbage in garbage out, he was comedy genius.
What a crock! George Carlin only told the truth and question what he was told. Something more of us should do!