George Carlin’s Pre-9/11 ‘I Kinda Like It When a Lotta People Die’ Routine Surfaces

The night before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, George Carlin taped a performance at a Las Vegas venue with the intention of using it as the basis for his next HBO special. The centerpiece was a bit called “I Kinda Like It When a Lotta People Die.” Little wonder, then, that Carlin shelved that piece of material, which is only now seeing the light of day: A CD and download of the performance will be available Friday, Sept. 16. (It can also be heard on Sirius XM radio.)

In an eerie moment of the routine when heard now, Carlin tells a joke about an airline passenger’s fart so strong, it blows up an airplane, adding, “And you know who gets blamed? Osama bin Laden.” Two months after 9/11, Carlin put together a different HBO special, called Complaints and Grievances, that used parts of that Vegas performance combined with new material.

Carlin, who died in 2008, was often ahead of his time in his willingness to address uncomfortable subjects with a fierce comic directness. Long before the term “politically correct” became pervasive, Carlin aggressively rejected the notion that Some Things Should Not Be Talked About. The difference between the comedian and so many people currently in public life, however, is that Carlin knew how to transmute an examination of volatile topics into art — often blunt, vulgar humor, to be sure, but true art nonetheless, carefully honed jokes whose wordplay was crafted with immense care.

As presented on the I Kinda Like It CD I’ve listened to, that chunk of material is about Carlin’s assertion that he — and, he insists, we in the audience as well — enjoy hearing about an event that results in the deaths of many people. He talks mostly about natural disasters — floods, fires, mass epidemics, earthquakes — and posits the idea that, from a safe distance, we feel delighted relief. (Warning: Trailer below contains NSFW language.)

This routine isn’t the only one in this collection. There’s another bit here that is even more timely, and which would be shocking if Carlin were around to perform it now. Called “Rats and Squealers,” it finds Carlin saying he detests anyone who informs on another person to the police. Why? Because Carlin stands squarely against the police, whom he accuses of frequently using excessive force, arresting or abusing minorities out of all proportion to white suspects, and planting evidence — all of this phrased in language I can’t use here.

If Carlin were around now and performing “Rats and Squealers,” you can be sure he’d be excoriated by Fox News and conservative media — and, who knows, probably by outposts on the left as well, for being too white, male, and privileged to presume to speak on such matters. In any event, it’s great that Carlin’s daughter Kelly, his manager Jerry Hamza, and archivist Logan Heftel have made this valuable document of Carlin’s work available to us now.