The artist and comedian George Carlin kicked the bucket Sunday night. Why the crude phraseology? Because Carlin would have wanted it that way. He viewed the phrase "passed away" as one of the earliest forms of political correctness, something he despised long before it was cool to despise it.

It may seem odd for a blog focused on artists' rights to profile a comedian. Carlin did produce valuable copyrighted works, from his gold comedy albums in the 1970s to his 16 HBO specials over the last three decades. But I wish to focus here on his role as an artist.

He was an entertainer; he wanted to make people laugh. "But not all entertainers are artists," he told XM Satellite Radio recently in an interview. Carlin, a 9^th grade dropout who began doing drugs at age 13, viewed himself as an artist of the written word. And was he ever.

Who hasn't heard the famous routine comparing our pastimes, football and baseball?

In football, the object is for the quarterback, otherwise known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use the shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy's defensive line.

In baseball the object is to go home! And to be safe! "I hope I'll be safe at home!"

Carlin had no peer in his ability to show even a writer like myself oddities of language I somehow had missed. (As someone who studied Middle Eastern politics in school, my favorite oxymoron of his was "Lebanese government.")

In the XM interview he gave his own example of his artistry with words, acknowledging that while he was proud of it, it didn't generate the laughs of, say, his "seven words you can't say on television." In the HBO special "Jammin in New York," he did a routine called "The Planet is Fine, the People are F#$&ed." (I added the odd characters.)

His concept? The planet will outlive us all. We can't kill it, it can heal itself. When people say "Save the Planet!" what they really mean is they are pursuing their self-interest and want to save their habitat and not live with pollution or toxins. That's fine, he said, but they should be more honest in their wording.

He's right, of course, and he almost always was. (I heard a routine from him once about how "we all" hoard our toenail clippings; I do not do that, so there was at least one instance where I differed with him, although I also find it amusing when after being clipped one flies across the room and can't be found.)

Now, if you've stayed this long, I'll tie this in with the rest of the title above. Carlin said that for a young comedian today, there are pluses and minuses to getting started. A plus is user-generated-content, where it's much easier for a comedian to get exposure. This is good, he said.

The problem is figuring out how to build on that to start a paying career. Traditionally you started at coffee houses, worked up to clubs and college campuses, got onto a syndicated TV show, then onto a network show, then got a record contract and cable stand-up contracts. Today, he said, in this fractionalized media environment, it's difficult to know where to go after you get a few hits on YouTube.

That reminded me of two creators who did make it big after starting out as UGC makers, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who signed with Comedy Central to produce South Park. They have an episode involving gnomes who steal underpants – lots of underpants. Why? They have a business plan, of course. Phase One: Steal underpants. Phase Two: ? Phase Three: Profit.

There are many non-creators out there who keep telling artists to focus on their own Phase One: Give away your works. Their Phase Three is profit. They never seem to provide Phase Two.

The digital era provides both opportunities and challenges for today's artists. George Carlin recognized this. I hope others will begin to as well.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 at 9:05 am by Patrick Ross and is filed under copyright opponents, creators, market forces. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.