Russert and Carlin

Since the deaths of Tim Russert and George Carlin I’ve heard some commentators make the observation of each of these men that “(Russert) didn’t know he was Tim Russert” or “(Carlin) didn’t know he was George Carlin.” I know what they mean but I think they’re saying it backwards.

Tim Russert knew exactly who Tim Russert was and George Carlin knew exactly who George Carlin was and that was why each of them was so unaffected.

When I was going to school in Washington, D.C. I had a friend named Tom McCracken. Tom had an annoyingly down to earth approach to a lot of things. While my other buddies and I would be raving over some particularly impressive bit of Nation’s Capital talent Tom would remain unimpressed. When pushed for a reaction he might allow, “She’s all right.” Pushed further Tom would say, “Look, she shits, she pisses, she’s like everybody else,” with a very down to earth Western Pennsylvania drawl.

Most of us don’t meet famous people every day and we think it’s kind of cool when we do. Even if the person we meet is of questionable celebrity, which would make it notoriety, we’re still impressed although I doubt many of us could explain why we think so.

Tim Russert met famous, even genuinely important people, every day and seemed to get a kick out of that but he still knew that they were full of the same kinds of dishonesties, great and small, that we, our best friends and our worst enemies are.

Vanity, insecurity, pomposity, disingenuousness, outright dishonesty are all there in those whom we believe important and I would guess they are present in roughly the same measure that they are in the rest of us. I believe Tim Russert could see this even when he was in the company of the powerful. Where the rest of us might tend to get drooly in the presence of the famous or powerful, or in some way try to suck up to them, Russert had the ability to remember that they are still just people.

I get the impression that Russert always remembered that no matter how important or famous someone may be he still had to take a shower, shave, comb his hair and get through life just like the rest of us. He was always respectful of the office the individual held but he didn’t let the importance of the office become the individual.

In my better moments I like to refer to political office holders as the hired help. I wish more of them could remember that in reality that’s what they are. They may be more important because they hold the office but the office is not more important because they hold it.

George Carlin knew all that. He knew the adulation that he received was misplaced when it was based on his celebrity although I think he probably enjoyed the fact that his celebrity gave entre to his ideas. And his ideas could change.

He was the first comedian to grow his hair long and wear an earring. Not a big deal now when bankers do that but at the time it was pretty radical. It was also interesting what he said when he stopped wearing the earring and didn’t get a tattoo. He said he no longer wanted to engage in self mutilation.

What made George Carlin interesting and worth admiring was not that he was famous because he grew his hair when people his age didn’t do that, or that he stopped wearing suits when performing and started wearing t-shirts. It wasn’t even that he said the seven words that you can’t say on broadcast radio and TV.
It was that he got some of us to think about why any words are so powerful that they can’t be used. George Carlin, like Lenny Bruce before him, had us thinking about Voldemort long before J.K. Rowling created him.

My favorite Carlin line that I heard today. “If you promise not to pray in my school I’ll promise not to think in your church.”