George Carlin died of heart failure in Santa Monica, Calif., at 5:55pm on Sunday, at age 71.

“I’ve been fired from a lot of jobs…” pause “…you can tell.”

Just last week, Carlin was named the recipient of the 11th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

There are too many things to say about him.

He was the first host of SNL, and the first comedian to dress casually for a stand-up routine. Usually jeans, black t-shirts, a pony-tail and beard.

”Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” (one of his recorded routines) became the center of a landmark Supreme Court case; the most famous broadcast obscenity case of our time.

A columnist and admirer of Carlin was fired from the Boston Globe because he borrowed too heavily from this material.

A year later the routine was broadcast by radio station WBAI in New York, which was sanctioned by the FCC for broadcasting obscene language during daytime hours.

Carlin was arrested on July 21, 1972 at Milwaukee’s Summerfest and charged with violating obscenity laws after performing. The case was dismissed later that year, exonerating Carlin when a Wisconsin judge said that although indecent, it didn’t cause a disturbance and that Carlin had a right to free speech.

Where ever shit seemed to go down, Carlin was either there or had something insightful to say about it. When fellow comedian Lenny Bruce got arrested for obscenity, Carlin was in the building.

Carlin said that the Supreme Court ruling (a 5 to 4 decision that determined that the FCC had the right to censor broadcasts) reinforced the original point of George’s routine. And his frustration with America.

He stopped voting after George McGovern was defeated by Richard Nixon in 1972. I can’t be certain, but personally I think that’s when he first realized that elections, in his own words, were nothing more than “the illusion of choice”. I found this out in a similar fashion when I voted for John Kerry and he subsequently lost (on purpose).

In spite of all the troubles and hardships as a result of his acts, he never watered-down his anti-government routines.

He continued speaking his mind about our culture’s greed, stupidity and blind obedience to authority.

”I completely divorced myself from this species and culture, and realized I don’t give a fuck about America and the human race. It freed me up as a writer.”

He spoke out for single moms, women’s rights and took the Authoritarians to task for everything from military aggression to racism and even speciesism:

“How come when it’s us, it’s an abortion—but when it’s a chicken, it’s an omelet?”

“These ppl aren’t pro-life, they’re killing doctors! What?— if it’s a fetus they’ll do anything they can to save it but if it grows up to be a doctor they JUST might have to kill it? No, these ppl aren’t pro-life they’re anti-woman. They don’t like women. They believe a woman’s primary function is to be a broodmare for the State.”

And to his “pro-life” Catholic friends in New York, he had this to say:

“And when some of my Catholic friends [male bishops and cardinals] have experienced their first pregnancies, their first labor pains—when they’ve raised a couple of kids on their own on minimum wage, then I’d be glad to hear what they have to say about abortion, I’m sure it’ll be interesting. In the meantime what we need to do is tell these Catholic priests to keep their hands off the altar boys. Keep your hands to yourself Faddah!”

Carlin also spoke out for children whose parents were full of shit. Parents whose system of raising children was, to Carlin, a disfunctional and unnatural system. According to him (and I agree), the problem was that these parents are burning their children out, filling them full of Ritalin and dragging them around town in constant frenzical (frantic) search of meaningless structure. His prescription? Three hours a day of daydreaming.

“Every kid should be allowed at least three hours of daydreaming every day. It’s good for ya, you could use a little of it yourself.”

“When does a kid ever get to just sit in the yard with a stick? Do today’s kids even know what a stick IS?!”

“You wanna know how you can best help your children? LEAVE THEM THE FUCK ALONE!”

He even said, “No wonder kids smoke. It helps.”

He warned us about the misuse of antibiotics, which SINCE have had devastating effects on the health of millions, including a good friend of mine, who is fighting for his life in a Washington hospital after contracting MRSA (pronounced “mersa”), an antibiotic resistant bacteria now commonly contracted by people in hospital settings.

Carlin was born and grew up in Manhatten. During the polio epidemic he and other neighborhood children swam in the Hudson river (which was filled with raw sewage), “You know, to cool off!”

“But despite all this risky behavior no one in our neighborhood ever got polio, EVER. The polio never had a chance, we were tempered in raw shit!”

“What the hell do you think you have an immune system for!?!? To kill germs. But it needs germs to practice on! So if you live a completely sterile life, when germs do come around, you’re not gonna be prepared. Nevermind the ordinary germs, what happens when some super virus comes along that turns your insides to liquid shit! What are you gonna do then? I’ll TELL you what you’re gonna do, you’re gonna get sick and you’re gonna die, because you have a fucking weak immune system.”

To the Authoritarians, the military (Carlin was enlisted in the Air Force and got a court martial and several write-ups, presumably because he was doing off-base radio shows)—to the government, to various employers, to the Church, to the self-righteous… even in the face of personal hardships brought on by arrests, reprimands, job terminations, and criticism from the public…

Carlin never sold out.

He never backed down.

And he never gave in.

And we are richer for it. Goodbye George!