Four Words You Can Say...

Thank you, George Carlin.

He was no great friend of organized religion and chalked up a lot of humanity's problems to what he called religious superstition. But Carlin had a first-class mind and offered some pretty pointed critiques of society that would not be out of place in the pulpit on Sunday morning, like this one (Warning for those concerned: Carlin's free-range vocabulary is evident).

Carlin understood that satire works best as a scalpel, which has to make its cuts cleanly and with precision. Way too much stuff that gets called satire today, either in print or performed, works more like peeling a grape with an ax. The target is indeed sliced open, but since it's pretty much destroyed, and there's nothing left of it, who cares?

He critiqued his targets with this satirical eye, never seeming to forget that one of satire's key ingredients is humor -- if you mock something and nobody laughs, then all you're doing is complaining, and there's plenty of that to go around.

Happy trails, Rufus.