George Carlin Is Not a "BAD American"
I Am Your Worst Nightmare. I am a BAD American.
I am George Carlin.
I believe the money I make belongs to me and my family, not some midlevel governmental functionary with a bad comb-over who wants to give it away to crack addicts squirting out babies.
I'm not in touch with my feelings and I like it that way, damn it!
I believe no one ever died because of something Ozzy Osbourne, Ice-T or Marilyn Manson sang.
So begins a popular e-mail message currently circulating in cyberspace. The real George Carlin wants you to know that he didn't write it.
Reacting to various phony bits attributed to him, Carlin writes:
Some are essay-length, some are just short lists of one and two-line jokes, but if they're flyin' around the Internet, they're probably not mine. Occasionally, a couple of jokes on a long list might have come from me, but not often. And because most of this stuff is really lame, it's embarrassing to see my name on it.
And that's the problem. I want people to know that I take care with my writing, and try to keep my standards high. But most of this "humor" on the Internet is just plain stupid. I guess hard-core fans who follow my stuff closely would be able to spot the fake stuff, because the tone of voice is so different. But a casual fan has no way of knowing, and it bothers me that some people might believe I'd actually be capable of writing some of this stuff.
That's fine, as far as it goes, but what explains this excerpt from Braindroppings that Carlin has posted to his official site?:
"Sometimes, a person who is some distance away from you will say something you don't quite understand, so you ask them to repeat it, and you still can't make out what they?re saying. So you ask them two or three more times to repeat it, and by that time you're getting embarrassed, so you pretend to understand and say, "Yeah!" You know, just to be done with it. Then later, it turns out what they said was, "We're coming over tonight to remove your wife's ovaries. Will that be all right?"
