A & E

Remembering Carlin

I'm dreaming about trying to locate what has been billed within my dream as the greatest record store in modern history. Apparently it's a three-story annex to an enormous mall with a series of escalators that appear to have been designed by M.C. Escher, moving stairs that just miss where I need to go and return to where I have just been. The store that has every record I’ve ever wanted is tantalizingly close. If I could just figure out how to get on that escalator … over there.

A phone rings. My cell? I don’t have it on me. Whose phone is that? I should answer it. Maybe it’s someone who can tell me how to get to the record store. I turn to face the sound and find myself off the surrealist escalators and in my bed. Damn. No record store.

I can see from the ID it’s my friend Kirk in Florida. I pick up the phone and immediately think of the old bit by Robert Klein about answering the phone from a dead sleep and trying not to sound like someone who’s been in an overnight coma.

“Did you hear about George?” says Kirk. I think for a dream-dazed moment. Is he talking about Bush? He would never refer to him as George. Bush, sure. The Antichrist, more likely. Not George. I can’t seem to come up with an appropriate George or a coherent response, so I say, “I guess not.”

“Carlin died yesterday. He had a heart attack.”

Oh. That George. My heart fell. It’s falling still.

Imus Redux

Dick Cavett is apparently a semi-regular blogger on The New York Times Web site. Yes, the same Cavett who was a popular television talk show host in late ’60s and early ’70s, the same Cavett who once had novelists Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer match wits as dueling guests. (Oh, how the television landscape has changed…)

While perusing the Times' site the other day, I came across Cavett’s latest post, which delves into the remarkably swift downfall of radio host Don Imus. It seems the I-Man will make his return to the airwaves sometime soon, an occasion that has Cavett waxing on about what he sees as Imus’ unfair ouster and continued status as a scapegoat.

Cavett finds most of Imus’ detractors to be hypocrites who have overblown the significance of the offense in question. He frames the incident as largely a free speech issue, an issue of context.

I have mixed feeling about the whole affair, but I agree with Cavett that one of the most troubling issues at play here is the devolution of our cultural debate, especially when it comes the vital component of context. Was Imus’ comment crass? No question. Was it part of his act as a sometimes caustic, satire-saturated talk show host? Yeah, I think it was.

Put in a local context: Was Imus' comment any different than the often ludicrous bile that spills from Bill Cunningham’s mouth on WLW?

The question remains: How do we determine when a satirist crosses the line?

— Jason Gargano