Summer Time and the Liv’n Ain’t Easy Without Russert & Carlin

©2008 Jonathan Dobrer   JonDobrer@mac.com

It’s summer time and, according to the Gershwin brothers, the living should be easy, the catfish jumping and the cotton high.  Well, I don’t know about the catfish—if they are jumping it’s probably to escape the toxic water.  And as to the cotton…well, it is high and so are corn, ethanol, gas, oil and rice.  Everything is high—except our spirits. 

It is summer time and the liv’n is tough.  We fear for our jobs, our largest investment (manifest for most in our homes); we hesitate to drink the water and breathe the air.  A once simple BLT is a big commitment in the price of the bread, the cholesterol in the bacon and now even the safety of the tomato.  I’m also not sure what to make of the lettuce and mayonnaise.  We don’t know if social security will out last us and if we can afford the medicines prescribed for us. 

We seem, as a nation to be (dare I quote a line attributed to Jimmy Carter?), in a “general malaise.”  Polling data indicate that most Americans believe we are headed in “the wrong direction.”  This is true of both Republicans and Democrats.  This is the good news of the season: We have bridged the great national divide and agree that it is a bridge to nowhere and we are lost.  While there is no trans-party agreement on what to do, I think most Americans would like to be living in peace, have gas cost half what it does today, have real wages rise enough to keep up with inflation—or to use another term from the unlamented Carter era, stagflation.

As Americans we seem to have a sense of foreboding.  9-11 woke us from sweet sleep to a waking nightmare, a sense of vulnerability and dread as we wait for the other shoe to drop.  A war in Iraq has shaken our sense of our might as well as our right to spread our views and values.  A war in Afghanistan has been both supported by the public and ignored by the politicians.  Strange. 

Our political language is debased and a Clean Skies Initiative is meant to degrade clear air standards.  Save Our Forests is a license to cut down more trees.  Weapons are called “peacekeepers,” and we not only do not say what we mean but often exactly what we do not mean.  Genocide pretends to be cleansing.  Dead human beings become “collateral damage.”  A first strike military attack is now “pre-emptive.”

The number one observer, commentator and critic of this kind of cant was George Carlin. Sadly he just left the stage—much to our detriment.  We have also lost, at nearly the same time, Tim Russert.  This is exactly the wrong time to be missing these two great decoders of our society’s mendacity, hypocrisy and spin. 

You might wonder what Russert and Carlin had in common that we would miss them so in this election season.  Aside from being Irish, their jobs and styles seemed very different…and yet they served the same end.  They made us think, question and look more deeply at our world and at the language people use to elucidate or obfuscate.

On the surface and on style they could not have been more different.  Russert was a life-long devout Catholic for whom his religious belief was central to his life.  Carlin was also of Catholic origin and his religion too remained central to him in that it was what he rebelled against.  Carlin didn’t so much leave completely as stand in the doorway and shout criticism—definitely from the prophetic tradition.  Russert was almost unfailingly polite and civil.  Carlin, not so much.  He loved the dirty words—and wondered how words got to be dirty, believing that actions were the truer test.  Still, they were both fascinated by the world and strove to make sense and non-sense out of life. 

My favorite George Carlin routine was about drivers.  He observed that “any one who drives faster than me is a maniac and anyone who drives slower is an idiot.  I’m the only perfect one.”  This standard of self-importance and self-deception is central to how many of us think about ourselves while judging others.

Carlin, in the tradition of the Fool, told truth to power in a way that illuminated hypocrisy and deception.  It was Carlin who famously wondered that if fire fighters fight fires and crime fighters fight crime, what do freedom fighters fight?  It was Carlin who pointed out that jumbo shrimp, plastic glass and military intelligence were oxymorons.

I will miss them both.  Russert took the chaos, and with incisive questions, formed it into some shape of order.  He was able to take the words, positions, contradictions and spin of politicians and help us see what they were really saying.  He pricked the bubbles of the verbiage pols used to mislead us.

If Russert made order out of chaos, Carlin made chaos out of the appearance of order.  He pricked the bubbles of pomposity and self-importance of public figures—both political and religious.  He also made us look at our own confusion and self-deception.  He made us think.

Now, in this summer of our discontent, in this election season, just when we need clarity and straight thinking, we have lost two great observers of the social and political world.  With great decisions before us, with not so great politicians and PR people doing their best, which strangely is also their worst, we have to wade through the muck and mire without the help we counted on.  We know that as much as we object to negative campaigning, lies and distortions work.  We will be buried in fear mongering from both sides and on every issue.  We may feel we need to wash the muck off, but water is growing scarce.  We may wish to flee, but who can afford the gas?  We’ll just have to stay around, do our own due-diligence and try to make sense of it all. We will have to do the hard work of thinking about what we believe, what we want and how to achieve our visions.  We will have to do the hard work of getting us all headed in the right direction.  It won’t be easy without Russert and Carlin.