It is paranoia… if they're not out to get you

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on January 22nd, 2009

There’s AP article on the wires about George Carlin’s FBI files. (Carlin’s daughter conveniently turned them over to the press in time to promote the Feb. 4 PBS broadcast of the Mark Twain ceremony.)

Turns out there wasn’t much in the file to get excited about, aside from a couple angry letters from folks who took a dim view of his jokes about the FBI on two sets on The Jackie Gleason Show and The Carol Burnett Show.

There’s also a letter from Hoover himself thanking one of Carlin’s critics for defending his honor, and an internal FBI memo that quotes the director as asking: “What do we know of Carlin?”

Not much, as it turned out. The memo notes the FBI has “no data concerning Carlin” other than the two letters from his critics.

“Which kind of disappoints me,” laughed Carlin’s daughter, Kelly Carlin McCall, who provided the file to The Associated Press. “It doesn’t really cover any of his more radical 1970s stuff.”

Carlin obtained the file “years ago” after making a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

Oddly, AP reporter John Rogers opens the article with this:

Talk about irony. George Carlin spent decades pushing the bounds of free speech by saying the seven words you can never say on television, but not one of them made it into an FBI file on him.

The FBI investigates foul language? It’s news to us. That would be the purview of the FCC.

We suppose the author bought the meme that Carlin was “subversive.” But he was only so in matters of culture, not politics. John Lennon, on the other hand, had a 281-page FBI file, but he was in the thick of the anti-war effort, hanging out with Yippies and Black Panthers and such. (Hardly indictable offenses, but understandable that it would draw the attention of the feds, considering the tenor of the times.)

from → News • 0 Comments - Let's discuss! • Print-Friendly • Back To Top