Monday, June 23, 2008

RIP George Carlin

My love of the Jets and of football in general has endured losing seasons, misunderstanding girlfriends, intellectual assaults from huffy colleagues in graduate school, indifferent, hostile cities, and my own neuroses. I know that baseball is the thinking man's sport and that football is the thinking man's whipping post. But screw it. I love football. It's too late to change that now.

However George Carlin offered the most convincing depiction of baseball's superiority to football. Baseball represents the idyllic myth of the small town and the empty field. Football, on the other hand, is a conflict of attrition, an industrial battle for primacy. He was correct, of course. Football is war. How American.

RIP, Mr. Carlin. You were the first person I remember as a child being described as an "iconoclast."

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