r.i.p.

the rude one on george carlin (1937 - 2008):

You can't imagine how ballsy it was when George Carlin, as a semi-regular guest on the Ed Sullivan Show, decided to go from observational humor guy joking about the coming attractions at movies in 1967 to making genocide jokes in 1968. All the time surrounded by Peggy Lee or Helen Hayes or . . . Topo Gigio. By the time we get to 1971 and the dying days of Sullivan's variety show, Carlin was singing to the CBS audience, to the tune of "America the Beautiful":

"O beautiful for smoggy skies
Insecticided grain
For strip-mined mountains majesty
Above the asphalt plain
America! America!
Men sheds his waste on thee
And hides the pines with billboard signs
From sea to oily sea."

(Let us also praise Ed Sullivan, who routinely went to bat against the censors to bring edgier material to America.)