Carlin's legacy of laughs is secure

Inter Lake editorial

The world was very different in the late 1960s when comedian George Carlin arrived in living rooms across America thanks to the modern miracle of television.

Humor was certainly part of the world, with Bob Newhart, Shelly Berman and Mort Sahl picking up where Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Milton Berle and the other vaudevillians had left off. Sahl and the other newer comedians had a political edge to their humor that was new and somewhat dangerous, and Lenny Bruce pushed the envelope so far he fell out the other side.

But Carlin was unique. He was as rebellious as Bruce or Sahl, but as likable as Hope or Benny. He thus appealed to both generations at a time when "The Gap" was more than a clothing store.

Almost everyone who was alive in the 1960s and '70s remembers Al Sleet, the Hippy-Dippy Weatherman and can probably recite at least parts of the routine on demand ("Tonight's forecast: Dark. Continued dark throughout most of the evening, with some widely scattered light towards morning.").

Carlin had an ear for foolishness, using the language of the streets with the precision of a poet to poke fun at incompetence without turning savage. His fondness for obscenity did eventually lead some people to reject Carlin's brand of comedy, but it also found him many new devotees, especially when he delivered his best known routine, "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" (or in newspapers, for that matter).

Carlin died of a heart attack on Sunday at the age of 71, but he will remain a fixture of American comedy for many years to come. It is no mistake that he was to be awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor later this year by the Kennedy Center. Like Twain and other great humorists, Carlin had a gift for making us laugh at ourselves and learn lessons at the same time.

NBC announced earlier this week that Tom Brokaw will fill in as moderator of "Meet the Press" through the coming election season.

It is a wise decision by the network, which had no obvious choices on hand as a permanent replacement for Tim Russert, who died June 13 at the age of 58. Russert frankly set the bar too high for anyone in the NBC stable to match his standard, and Brokaw's tenure will allow the network to make a thorough and thoughtful search for a new host.

In the meantime, Brokaw will do just fine. He has a small-town charm that came from his South Dakota upbringing, but that is matched by a seriousness and studiousness that ensure he will "give as good as he gets" when interviewing the nation's newsmakers.

Russert would surely approve, and that's good enough for us.