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09/06/2004: Thought for the Day:
The Onion AV Club: I was reading your web site [georgecarlin.com], and you referred to George W. Bush as a fascist. But you don't vote. Why not vote against someone you think is a fascist?
George Carlin: Well, because it wouldn't make any difference. When fascism comes to this country, it won't be wearing jackboots; it'll be wearing sneakers with lights in them, and it'll have a smiley face and a Michael Jordan T-shirt
on. They learned the mistake of overt control. They've learned how to be much subtler. No, I don't think my vote would mean anything, and at the same time, it would make me very untrue to myself to participate in what I really think is a charade.
O: Well, you more or less hate society anyway, don't you?
GC: Um, I'm very disrespectful of it, and I'm contemptuous of it, but I don't think hate is in me, although we use that word the same way we use love: "Oh, boy, I love ice cream and I hate the Dodgers." But it is a distaste, a contempt, a dissatisfaction, a disillusionment, and a lot of qualities and feelings that come together and appear as anger on stage. I don't experience them as anger, I experience them as a deep distaste. I'm splitting semantic hairs here, but that's what they're for.
O: A lot of people like you seem to be running for president under the Reform Party.
GC: [Laughs.] I know. Well, you see, there's another thing: The Reform Party should be a serious reform party. This culture won't allow that, and most likely the Democrats and the Republicans are feeding that clown aspect of the Perot paranoia, whatever quality about Jesse Ventura they don't like, Pat Buchanan... They just demonize people. This culture is set up to end the debate before it even begins. The boundaries of debate are decided long before Nightline goes on the air by who they've selected to sit there. You don't see the fringe people-they put on Perot and put on Jesse Ventura largely, they think, to expose them as clowns. It's just funny to watch the gyrations and the machinations and the gymnastics that this culture goes through to bullshit itself. It's fun. To me, it's all entertainment. I'm here for the show. Philosophers say, "Why are we here?" I'll tell you why: I'm here for the show. I love it, and they entertain me to no end.
--The Onion AV Club Interview with George Carlin
Len on 09.06.04 @ 05:07 PM CST
