Thursday, June 26: Femme Fatale
THEIR WORDS COUNTED
by Deborah Elliott-Upton
The past two weeks I’ve been mostly traveling the highways. As much as I love seeing new places and meeting new people (and I really do), I’m a bit frazzled and writing this column on Wednesday, the 25th of June, designated as National Columnist Day. The notation on my calendar prompted me to think about columnists I’ve read – both past and present – that have influenced me in some manner along the way.
People who make us reexamine the way we think, talk and write amaze me. This past week we lost George Carlin. He didn’t really write columns or short stories, but his “stories” made us rethink just about everything.
When humor goes, there goes civilization. — Erma Bombeck 1927-1996
Carlin’s comedy routine, “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” is legendary and prompted the Supreme Court to signify rules for what could be said on radio and television and at what times. Maybe Don Imus didn’t hear about that ruling.
I think it is the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately. — George Carlin 1937-2008
A few years ago, Carlin stopped in my small city on his way to Dallas where he was taping an HBO special. It was obvious he was using us to finetune his performance, just as off-Broadway productions usually do.
He simply walked out onto the stage with no introduction. When the audience erupted in applause, he shushed us rather angrily as if he was in a hurry and we’d annoyed him. He started one of his one-word-tumbling-after-another monologues and when the crowd again started applauding, he stopped mid-sentence and said something like, “I have this memorized, don’t mess me up.” I wonder now if he’d not been feeling his best. He was funny, but there was an edge about him I’d not seen before and part of his routine included a tirade. No one laughed at the end of it. This wasn’t the Carlin we’d expected. I haven’t seen the HBO production, so maybe he was just having a bad night. We all have them and I believe our work and relationships suffer when we do. All performances, short stories or columns are not surefire hits, but Carlin had enough to make us sad at his passing. I wonder what he would have tackled next. George Carlin made a difference in this world. He made us think, he made us gasp at his candor and oh, yes, he made us laugh while we did it. His words counted.
As I’m sure she did many others, Erma Bombeck re-routed my life. I remember reading one of her Wits End columns where instead of making me laugh, she was quite serious. The column talked about being a late bloomer and putting things she wanted to do in life on hold for one reason or another. The article ended with her saying although she’d wanted to be published and was told repeatedly she should write for a living, Bombeck waited until she was 37 years old before writing professionally. I got the messages: Life is short and It’s never too late to start. Her words counted.
Life is like a dogsled team. If you ain’t the lead dog, the scenery never changes. — Lewis Grizzard, 1946-1994
I often turned to humorist Lewis Grizzard’s column knowing I’d end the read with at the very least a smile, and more often, a laugh. He told great stories in the Good Ol’ Southern boy manner and managed to weave in a few words of wisdom as a gift to his fans. In the cemetery outside his beloved hometown of Moreland, Georgia, he is buried under the name “Word.” No, it isn’t his Final Word prank, but his mother’s maiden name. Grizzard rests in the grave beside hers. His words counted.
The more you read and observe about this Politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other. The one that’s out always looks the best. — Will Rogers, Illiterate Digest (1924), “Breaking into the Writing Game.”
I enjoy many political columnists, too, but since politics isn’t something we all agree on, I’ll keep my favorites to myself. Their words count, but something we all should realize is that all our words count. Make sure you say what you mean and mean what you say. Don’t make me come after you.
One columnist I’ll never forget is the late Hondo Crouch, self-proclaimed Mayor of Luckenbach, Texas. I still sing along whenever I hear Willie and Waylon celebrate his town on the radio.
Another late and great columnist I greatly admire, this from my tenure in SoCal, was the wonderful Jack Smith, who was able to infuse the hard glitter of Los Angeles with human warmth.
Thanks for a very evocative piece, Deb.
Your words certainly make an impression, too, and always encourage us to keep on keepin’ on, hoping to make some impact on at least a few people in our world.
Thanks, Debbie.
My favorite deceased columnist is probably Robeert Benchley, although I never read im in the papers.
Another is John Diamond, who won prizes in the UK but never made it over here. (You mayhave seen cooking shows with his widow, Nigella Lawson.) A few lines from JD:
“It just never occurs to me until it’s too late that Learn Banjo in Five Minutes a Day means five minutes a day for the rest of my life.”
“Desperate times call for desperate analogies.”
“How could anything so sublimely complicated not be the simple answer?”
I love Erma Bombeck. She had such a way of with words doused with humour and the wiseness of every day life.
Carlin had a filthy mouth but he was/is one of my favorite comedians (along with Steven Wright with one-liners) because he could make me laugh at things I wouldn’t normally have given a 2nd thought.
Great column as usual, Deborah.
Dave Barry, who was at the 2007 MWA is one of my favorites, although I have to read him in smaller doses– I get an ice cream headache. I enjoyed Dorothy Parker, although I was too little at the time to fully appreciate her.
The best comics are able to execute sharp turns into other emotions. Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Red Skelton come to mind.
The only words of Erma Bombeck I remember aren’t humorous at all. She described driving her mother somewhere, hitting the brakes and throwing out her arm to brace her mother from hitting the dashboard. At that moment, she said, she realized she’d become the mother and her mom had become the child.
Shortly before his death in 1981, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer William Saroyan telephoned his last words to the The Associated Press: “Everybody has got to die, but I have always believed an exception would be made in my case. Now what?”
Adding to your take on Carlin I gotta add.that comedians have to be on the leading edge of thoughts and opinions or what they say isn’t funny. I think they are an under-appreciated artists.
And on the leading edge this week (I hope the late-night guys pick this up) is the tectonic movement — some have called in a bowel movement — in San Francisco to rename their new, state-of-the-art water treatment facility the “George W. Bush Sewage Treatment Plant.” Donations can be sent from any bathroom in the Bay Area.
Erma Bombeck stirred memories for me, how her written words inspired so many women to do what they desired before it was too late.
I too saw Carlin live years ago and loved his albums. Bombeck actually recorded a record of a couple of her personal appearances (“The Grass Is Greener Over The Septic Tank”). My fav. columnist? A local Wichita guy, Bob Getz (retired a few years back), and I’ll quote my fav. line from political comic Mark Russell; “I was travelling through the midwest…and I saw a headline in the newspaper. It said ‘Supreme Court Considers Homosexuality.’ My immediate thought was ‘all nine of them!?'” (And the Dr. Demento radio show sometimes plays an extraordinary version of Carlin’s “7 Words” bit with the words bleeped perfectly. Carlin himself said he loved it.