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Brick Wall Comedy
Brick Wall Comedy

You Are All Diseased

George Carlin

Eardrum Records · Album · 1999 · 65 min

An hour of structural complaints about American fear and sanitized language.

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George Carlin spends an hour targeting a culture paralyzed by artificial anxieties and sanitized language. He zeroes in on the exact mechanisms of American fear, pulling apart the obsession with germs, the theater of airport security, and the rise of helicopter parenting. It is a set built entirely on rejecting the idea that anything needs to be safe.

Recorded at the Beacon Theater in New York City in 1999, the album finds Carlin deep into the late-career stride where he abandoned pure observation for broad complaints about society. The show’s anchor is his prolonged attack on religion and marketing, culminating in an explanation of why he prays to actor Joe Pesci instead of God. Carlin strings together rapid-fire corporate speak in his “Advertising Lullaby” bit to point out how easily people digest nonsense. The broadcast version of the hour earned two Emmy nominations and cemented the combative tone he maintained for the rest of his working life.

The set list

4 bits

  1. Airport Security

    Examines the absurdities and lack of logic in airport security measures and standard questioning, arguing that they serve primarily to give white Americans an illusion of safety at the expense of freedom.

  2. Fear of Germs

    Deconstructs media-induced panic over disease and bacteria, highlighting ridiculous precautions such as swabbing an inmate's arm with alcohol before lethal injection.

  3. There Is No God

    Outlines why the existence of suffering, war, disease, and chaos proves that any supreme being running the universe would be deemed incompetent and fired.

  4. House of Blues

    Proposes that if white people burn down Black churches, Black people ought to burn down the House of Blues.

How it plays

Tone
Dark, satirical, outlandish
On stage
Objective, confrontational, and satirical; characterized by critics as presenting a grumpy disposition and upfront, mind-expanding rants.
About
Airport security, Fear of germs and hygiene obsession, Religion and God, Terrorism, American culture and commercialism

What the critics said

The New York Times highlighted the special's objective perspective and encouragement of critical thinking outside traditional political leanings, whereas critic Matt Hanks faulted it as crossing into social impotence with sloppy riffs on terrorism and religion that substituted hollow extremity for subversion.

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: primevideo.com, allmovie.com, atheistempire.com, staging.ghostlifestyle.com, intuitivefred888.blogspot.com, howto.tutorialkita.net.

Backstory

A satirical piece examining counterculture, sensitive societal topics, and hot-button issues in American culture, challenging social norms from an objective viewpoint.

Details

Released
Runtime
65 min
Where
Eardrum Records (album)
Director
Rocco Urbisci
Honors
Nominated for 1999 Emmy Award: Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy SpecialNominated for 1999 Emmy Award: Outstanding Performance In A Variety Or Music Program
Topics
Before
40 Years of Comedy (1997)
After
Napalm and Silly Putty (2001)

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