The death of George Carlin is perhaps a bigger loss for the conscience of America than even the recent passing of Tim Russert. Because unlike Russert the journalist, who had to maintain some sense of impartiality, Carlin was freed by the liberation of the single mike stand on the stage to call bullshit on whatever he found to be an outrage to his sensibility. But the true genius of George Carlin is that he always made us laugh. Sort of the intellectual equivalent of hiding a bitter pill in a spoonful of applesauce.

All of those comic voices who have come since, owe him a debt of gratitude because Carlin codified the art form of politically relevant comedy that Lenny Bruce first brought to us. But Carlin started in that stealth-like manner that many of the stand-up comedians who would define the 60s did. Appearances in a suit and tie on Ed Sullivan and Johnny Carson would not hint at the change that would occur on a single album in 1972. That was the year that Carlin released “AM/FM”.

On one side of the vinyl disc (that’s right, we’re talking 12-inch LP here. Way before CDs) was the material called “AM”, the stuff of the clean cut young man wearing a suit who had made Ed and Johnny laugh out loud. But much like the “FM” radio that would become the alternative voice of change in the 70′s, the other side was the long haired, jeans wearing, and full of swearing Carlin that captured the culture that would transition us all from the end of Nixon and Vietnam to the dawn of Disco and Reagan’s “Morning In America”.

It was his spot-on parody of a Top-40 disc jockey in the late 60s that I heard and adopted as my very own. His creation of “Wonderful WINO radio” led me to memorize the patter and perform it at an elementary school talent assembly in the seventh grade. It would be years before I would fully appreciate the risk that my teacher would have taken in allowing me to perform such a routine. It was the first time that I got laughs and applause from a stage and it was overwhelming.

That wouldn’t be the first time I would “borrow” the brilliant material of George Carlin to make my friends laugh. But perhaps the greater influence in my life would be the fact that the man would introduce me to the 7 most important words in the English language–also known as “The 7 words you can’t say on television.” These words would also be known as the ones I would work into every sentence that I uttered for the remainder of my high school years, at least the ones uttered outside of the hearing of my teachers and parents.

True Confession Time: I have always harbored a Walter Mitty type fantasy of being a stand-up comedian. Even today, I occasionally allow myself to believe that I might be creative and funny enough to be discovered at an open mic night that I have yet to get up the nerve to do. But somewhere along the line I realized that as long as there were true geniuses like George Carlin performing their chosen craft in the spotlight, I probably shouldn’t quit my day job. That probably became clear in October of 1975 when Carlin hosted the very first edition of a quirky new late night show called “NBC’s Saturday Night”.

In newsrooms there is a dark bit of lore that holds that big name deaths always come in threes. If Tim Russert and George Carlin were the first two of that trio, then I can’t imagine the third important voice that we may yet lose, as the first two that have been silenced were such giants and will be so missed.