Any debate where one of the parties removes their pants is a good debate. We need some pants removing in national politics.
So said a commenter regarding this Associated Press story in the Minneapolis StarTribune.
I posted a couple of bits by comic George Carlin last week. He was very, very funny. He took ill yesterday and died. A couple of obits:
One of America’s most popular and often controversial comedians, George Carlin, died in Santa Monica, California. He was 71.
How George Carlin Changed Comedy
When the culture began to change in the late 1960s — when the old one-liner comics on the Ed Sullivan Show were looking pretty tired and irrelevant to a younger generation experimenting with drugs and protesting the War in Vietnam — George Carlin was the most important stand-up comedian in America. By the time he died Sunday night (of heart failure at age 71), the transformation he helped bring about in stand-up comedy had become so ingrained that it’s hard to think of Carlin as one of America’s most radical and courageous artists. But he was.
Say It Ain’t So: George Carlin Dies
How many TV news orgs will say the seven words?
George Carlin is dead, but his words live on. Especially his big seven from his monologue “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” on the 1972 album Class Clown:
Shit
Piss
Fuck
Cunt
Cocksucker
Motherfucker
Tits
From the voice, a transcript of the routine:
I love words. I thank you for hearing my words. I want to tell you something about words that I uh, I think is important. I love..as I say, they’re my work, they’re my play, they’re my passion. Words are all we have really.
We have thoughts, but thoughts are fluid. You know, [humming]. And, then we assign a word to a thought, [clicks tongue]. And we’re stuck with that word for that thought. So be careful with words. I like to think, yeah, the same words that hurt can heal. It’s a matter of how you pick them.
There are some people that aren’t into all the words. There are some people who would have you not use certain words. Yeah, there are 400,000 words in the English language, and there are seven of them that you can’t say on television. What a ratio that is. 399,993 to seven. They must really be bad. They’d have to be outrageous, to be separated from a group that large. All of you over here, you seven. Bad words. That’s what they told us they were, remember? ‘That’s a bad word.’ ‘Awwww.’ There are no bad words. Bad thoughts. Bad Intentions.
And words, you know the seven don’t you? Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, and Tits, huh? Those are the heavy seven. Those are the ones that will infect your soul, curve your spine and keep the country from winning the war.
Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, and Tits, wow. Tits doesn’t even belong on the list, you know. It’s such a friendly sounding word. It sounds like a nickname. ‘Hey, Tits, come here. Tits, meet Toots, Toots, Tits, Tits, Toots.’ It sounds like a snack doesn’t it? Yes, I know, it is, right. But I don’t mean the sexist snack, I mean, New Nabisco Tits. The new Cheese Tits, and Corn Tits and Pizza Tits, Sesame Tits Onion Tits, Tater Tits, Yeah. Betcha can’t eat just one. That’s true I usually switch off . But I mean that word does not belong on the list.
Actually, none of the words belong on the list, but you can understand why some of them are there. I am not completely insensitive to people’s feelings. You know, I can dig why some of those words got on the list…like cocksucker and motherfucker. Those are…those are heavy-weight words. There’s a lot going on there, man. Besides the literal translation and the emotional feeling. They’re just busy words. There’s a lot of syllables to contend with. And those K’s. Those are aggressive sounds, they jump out at you. CocksuckerMotherfuckerCocksucker. It’s like an assault, on you. So I can dig that.
And we mentioned shit earlier, of course. Two of the other 4-letter Anglo-Saxon words are Piss and Cunt, which go together of course. But forget about that. A little accidental humor there. Piss and Cunt. The reason Piss and Cunt are on the list is that a long time ago certain ladies said ‘Those are the two I am not going to say. I don’t mind Fuck and Shit, but P and C are out. P and C are out.’ Which led to such stupid sentences as ‘OK, you fuckers, I am going to tinkle now.’
And of course the word Fuck. The word Fuck, I don’t really…well, this is some more accidental humor, but I don’t really want to get into that now. Because I think it takes too long. But I do mean that. I mean, I think the word fuck is an important word. It’s the beginning of life, and, yet it’s a word we use to hurt one other, quite often. And uh, people much wiser than I have said, I’d rather have my son watch a film with two people making love than two people trying to kill one other. And I of course agree. I wish I know who said it first, and I agree with that. But I would like to take it a step further. I would like to substitute the word fuck, for the word kill in all those movie cliches we grew up with. ‘Okay Sheriff, we’re gonna fuck ya now. But we’re gonna fuck ya slow.’ So maybe next year I’ll have a whole fuckin’ rap on that word. I hope so.
Uh, there are two-way words, but those are the seven you can never say on television. Under any circumstances you just can not say them ever, ever ever, not even clinically. You can not weave them in the panel with Doc and Ed and Johnny, I mean it’s just impossible, forget those seven, they’re out.
But, there are some two-way words. There are double-meaning words. Remember the ones your giggled at in sixth grade? ‘And the cock crowed three times.”Hey, the cock the cock crowed three times. It’s in the bible.’ There are some Two-way words, like it’s okay for Curt Gowdy [mis-spelled in original transcription. -ed.] to say ‘Roberto Clemente has two balls on him.’ But he can’t say, ‘I think he hurt his balls on that play Tony, don’t you? He’s holding them. He must have hurt them by God.’ And the other two-way word that goes with that one is prick. It’s okay if it happens to your finger. Yes, you can prick your finger, but don’t finger your prick. No, no.
I was wondering if you might indulge me and consider what Scalia is saying in this post:
Both Scalia and his teenage interlocutor seemed aware of some “Road to Damascus” conversion that Scalia had gone through on Free Speech.
“I have the capacity to admit I made a mistake,” Scalia started out in answering the young man’s question before choosing a different tack.
First, what is the mistake on Free Speech that Scalia is referring to?
Second, Scalia’s conversion on Free Speech seems to contain a trap that I cannot quite put my fingers on.
Is it just his “Originalist” (static) take on the Constitution? Or, are there other flaws in his thinking (as he articulated them here) on this issue?
The conceit, of course, is that Scalia is an “originalist.” Bush v. Gore would, at least, seem to indicate otherwise.
If you have RealPlayer, here’s a link to Scalia’s talk.
Update:
As I’d suspected, Scalia’s “originalist” sentiments here is a complete red-herring. People for the American Way cite chapter and verse ways that Scalia and his Toto, Clarence Thomas, would defile the Constitution and subvert Free Speech, if given the slightest chance.
In his March 14, 2005 Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF) speech, clarified that he is not a “strict constructionist” but, rather, an “originalist,” joking that people bring that up as he had some fatal disease (Justice Scalia, when did you first realize you’re an originalist, or, as he mordantly put it: “When did you first start eating human flesh?”)
There is, of course, the embarassing episode of Scalia keeping the media out of an event where he was being honored with a Free Speech award.
Update II:
The Washington Post had a rather superficial take on Scalia’s sitdown with the students but had a fuller story on Scalia, who’s not shy, being very visible at the moment.
Associate Justice Antonin Scalia hosted about 26 students from the Thomas Jefferson High School in Alexandria ( Fairfax County),Virginia at the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday. C-Span organized the meeting as part of its “Students and Leaders” program with sitting Supreme Court Justices.
Susan Swain of C-Span explained that TJ, as the school is known, had just been named the top high school in the nation by U.S. News & World Report.
I was surprised the Trenton, N.J.-born Scalia, who grew up in Queens, New York, is 72 years old. I’d thought him to be in his 50s (probably because his age, for me, was fixed at around the time he came on the court). In any case, Scalia is a father of nine and has 28 grandchildren (the session must have seemed like a normal family gathering to him).
Scalia was discursive and trenchant, if it is possible to be both at the same time, explaining, for instance, why he’s against the Court’s proceedings being televised. He talked about his upbringing and his hopes and dreams growing up. Here’s a link to the full talk, if you have RealPlayer. The most important point he addressed, to me, was on Free Speech. But before we get to that, he opened on an interesting note:
“Most of our time, I understand, would be devoted to questions but the price of admission is that I’m permitted to say a few things that I want you to know. And most of them pertain to the Constitution. You know the American people used to have a degree of veneration for that document that seems to have disappeared in recent times.
“I once receive a letter from a lady in Indiana which enclosed a copy of a letter that one of her ancestors had written to his grandson who at that time was in Georgia . The letter enclosed a copy of the constitution. It was written in about 1840. And it said to the grandson:
“My dear young man, if you would commit this to memory and repeat it to me upon your return, I will pay you the sum of $5.”
That was a lot f money in those days, 1840. That’s the kind of importance that people of prior generation placed upon the document.”
He went on to discuss the Constitution, its importance to our society compared to some of the oldest democracies in Europe. It was an engaging, very informative hour. Scalia did not condescend to the students. He mentioned Lawrence v. Texas, the 6-3 landmark ruling that in 2003 struck down sodomy laws that had criminalized homosexual sex, a number of times in a tone that left no doubt the ruling still rankled him.
The last question then fell to a student whose name I did not quite catch (I listened several times and the best I could make it to be is Kenneth Lee):
“Justice Scalia, how do you define Free Speech and has your definition evolved over time and does it have the capacity to evolve?” he asked:
Scalia:
Well, now it can evolve. I guess I have the capacity to admit that I made a mistake because what I look for is what was, what was considered . . . You know, the First Amendment does not guarantee Free Speech. It says: “Congress shall make no law abridging the Freedom of Speech . . .”
He seemed flustered at first but, now relishing the question, plowed on:
Ha, the definite article. What freedom of speech? That freedom of speech that was the right of Englishmen in 1791. So, I look back there and I say, you know, it doesn’t mean absolute any freedom of speech. In 1791 you couldn’t give information about troop movements to the enemy. That was treason. That speech was not permitted. You could not libel people. You would be punished in court for libeling people.
So, it was the freedom of speech that was the tradition of the Anglo Saxon law. And, no, my view on that doesn’t change because I’m not an evolutionist. I don’t believe in a ‘living Constitution’ (a well trod ground during the hour the students spent with him).
But, you know, you ought to be happy about that because I was the fifth vote, you may or may not know, in the case that held it was unconstitutional to prohibit the burning of an American Flag.
Now, in my social views, which I don’t apply from the bench, I’m a fairly conservative fella, to tell you the truth, and I don’t like people who burn the American flag and, if I were king, I would put them in jail. But I am not King and I am bound by First Amendment and my understanding of it is it gives you the right to criticize, to criticize severely, the country, the Court, the flag, and burning the flag is just a matter of communication. It’s a symbol. Just as language is a symbol. I mean, there is no communication that isn’t symbolic, right. I mean, these noises I’m making symbolize ideas.
And, when you read a paper, the markings on the paper symbolize sounds which in turn symbolize ideas. Burning a flag symbolize an idea. So, that was why I was the fifth vote and you ought to be happy about that because once I find what’s in the first Amendment, you got me. I can’t do what I would like to do.
The lesson I leave you with is, how are you going to control the judges who don’t believe in the original meaning, but who think the Constitution morphs and it means whatever it ought to mean today? You know what, they’re going to find that it ought to mean what they think it should mean, which is to say you don’t have much control over the judges.
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