Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter is valuable, too.

This snippet of a longer George Carlin routine was recorded nearly thirty years ago, as part of the 1988 comedy special What Am I Doing in New Jersey? All that’s missing is a reference to football — a subject that the master comedian of course covered ingeniously elsewhere — to make these couple of minutes shockingly pertinent for the current moment.

“We got the only national anthem that mentions rockets and bombs in the goddamn thing.”

It’s tempting to speculate about what commentary Carlin would have crafted about the politics of today. But even a cursory examination of his material shows that Carlin has long recognized, understood, and convincingly challenged the portion of the national character that has come to the forefront in our misbegotten current era.

Previous entries in this series can be found by clicking on the “Laughing Matters” tag.