I hadn’t intended to write about George Carlin’s recent death. But then something prompted me. It was this cartoon by Mike Lester, published on June 26 and widely syndicated throughout the US:

It’s an old rhetorical trick: find some statement that the reader will assume is made by someone of a particular persuasion and then make the big reveal, reversing expectations. It is somewhat bereft of argumentative clout — who can’t find someone somewhere who held a surprising and unexpected view in opposition to expectation? But this trick has great rhetorical traction. To true believers — in this case conservatives in Mike Lester’s audience — the message is, “See, even this famous liberal accepts our commanding argument.” To political enemies — in this case environmentalists of the left — the message is meant to read that this liberal icon actually shares the views of the typical right-wing nut, that is, “Even your own kind is against you.”

But rhetorical trickery aside, the problem with Lester’s cartoon is that it is a lie. He has quoted from a routine of Carlin’s with the purpose of completely misrepresenting him. So sure Carlin was needling the self-obsessed wing of the environmental movement, the poseurs and those more interested in saving their image than any ecosystem. But Carlin was not saying that environmentalism is useless. He was not saying that we can do no damage the environment. What he was saying, as all but the most lunatic fringe of the environmental movement has said, is that whatever damage we do will not destroy the Earth completely. We might destroy ourselves or cripple our civilisations, but the Earth itself will persist. Even if we did our absolute worst, there would still be living creatures on the planet.

Let’s have a look at what Lester left out of Carlin’s routine:

For centuries now, man has done everything he can to destroy, defile, and interfere with nature: clear-cutting forests, strip-mining mountains, poisoning the atmosphere, over-fishing the oceans, polluting the rivers and lakes, destroying wetlands and aquifers… so when nature strikes back, and smacks him on the head and kicks him in the nuts, I enjoy that. I have absolutely no sympathy for human beings whatsoever. None. And no matter what kind of problem humans are facing, whether it’s natural or man-made, I always hope it gets worse.

Wikipedia described George Carlin thus: “Language was a frequent focus of Carlin’s work. Euphemisms that in his view, seek to distort and lie, and the use of language he felt was pompous, presumptuous or silly, were often the target of Carlin’s routines.”

So now I’m torn. On the one hand, I want to mull over which one of Carlin’s Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television best describes Mike Lester. On the other hand I’m thankful that Lester reminded me, so soon after his death, why Carlin still matters.

Tags: cartoon, george carlin, lies, mike lester, misrepresentations