Rethinking a free speech icon

Thirty-two years after the Supreme Court ruled on a free speech case sparked by the George Carlin routine "Filthy Words," profanity and the First Amendment are in the news again. A ruling handed down this week by the New York-based Second Court of Appeals all but torpedoed the Federal Communications Commission's recent attempts to regulate so-called fleeting profanity on TV.

Carlin, a First Amendment absolutist who died in 2008, would have gotten a kick out of the court's decision (and a new routine as well). The ruling is a handy excuse to appreciate Carlin and praise a couple of excellent books about the comic: One is James Sullivan’s new biography "7 Dirty Words: The Life and Crimes of George Carlin." The other is "Last Words," a posthumous autobiography by Carlin and Tony Hendra that came out last November. Both are insightful stand-alone portraits of Carlin. But put them together and you get more than a multifaceted account of a comic’s career. You get a chronicle of a man's psychological evolution -- a slow unfurling of self-awareness that transformed Carlin from the colorful but safe performer he once believed he was fated to be, into the unique and courageous artist that he ultimately became.


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