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Seven Dirty Words_ The Life and Crimes of George Carlin - James Sullivan [78]

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” “Whereas I can perhaps understand an X-rated phonograph record’s being sold for private use,” Douglas wrote, “I certainly cannot understand the broadcast of same over the air that supposedly you control. Any child could have been turning the dial, and tuned in to that garbage.” He had recently read about the FCC fining a radio station for a sexually suggestive call-in discussion program, he wrote. “If you fine for suggestions,” Douglas asked, “should not this station lose its license entirely for such blatant disregard for the public ownership of the airwaves?” The complainant was said to be a minister and a member of the planning board of an organization called Morality in Media, to which he sent a copy of his letter.

George Carlin, comedian.

“Bing bong, five minutes past the big hour of five o’clock!”

Courtesy of Photofest NYC

Clowning with Buddy Greco on Away We Go, 1967.

The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, 1969.

Unveiling “The Hair Piece” on The Ed Sullivan Show, 1971.

Milwaukee bust, 1972.

Sticking it to the Man.

Manning the Tonight Show desk with guest Jimmy Breslin, 1974.

Bridging the generation gap: with Bob Hope and Flip Wilson, 1975.

Discussing the Comedian Health Sweepstakes with Richard Pryor on Carson’s show, 1981.

In a rare penguin suit at the Grammy Awards, 1982.

Keeping a few thoughts to himself, 1994.

With Ned Beatty in the made-for-TV miniseries Streets of Laredo (1995). One of Carlin’s proudest moments as an actor.

Cameo in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001). Less proud.

Miramax/View Askew Productions/ The Kobal Collection

Aspen, 2007.

From its original incarnation as a neighborhood watchdog group in 1962, Morality in Media had grown to a position of national prominence. When pornographic material began circulating among sixth-grade boys in a parish elementary school, Father Morton A. Hill of St. Ignatius Loyola Roman Catholic Church on New York’s Upper East Side quickly responded to parents’ complaints. A Jesuit priest with snow-white hair, he spearheaded an effort to found a local antipornography campaign. Then known as Operation Yorkville, Hill’s group was created as an interfaith coalition, including a rabbi and a Lutheran minister. By 1967 the neighborhood group had grown into a national organization, renamed Morality in Media. The group’s profile was established when Hill, its president, was invited to debate the novelist Gore Vidal, author of the racy best seller Myra Breckenridge, on The David Susskind Show. When the U.S. Congress announced the formation of President Johnson’s Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, Hill was appointed one of the commission’s eighteen members.

Father Hill and his supporters believed that the president’s commission was weighted heavily in favor of First Amendment “absolutists,” and they felt their concern was validated when the commission’s report was published in 1970. The report recommended increased emphasis on sex education for children and the decriminalization of all pornography for adults. Members of Congress and the Nixon administration expressed their outrage, adamantly denouncing the commission’s suggestions, and the whole episode took on an element of farce when a publisher brought out a notorious illustrated edition of the report. In response, Father Hill and a fellow clergyman on the commission, Dr. Winfrey C. Link, collaborated on a dissenting opinion that came to be known as the Hill-Link Minority Report, which was read into the record of the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives and would soon be cited in Supreme Court obscenity hearings.

When John Douglas filed his complaint about the “Filthy Words” broadcast, the FCC could simply have rejected it, because the petitioner couldn’t provide

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Seven Dirty Words_ The Life and Crimes of George Carlin - James Sullivan [78]

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