By 1972, when he released his second album, ”FM & AM,” his star was again on the rise. The album, which won a Grammy Award as best comedy recording, combined older material on the “AM” side with bolder, more acerbic routines on the “FM” side. Among the more controversial cuts was a routine euphemistically entitled “Shoot,” in which Mr. Carlin explored the etymology and common usage of the popular idiom for excrement. The bit was part of the comic’s longer routine “Seven Words That Can Never Be Said on Television,” which appeared on his third album “Class Clown,” also released in 1972.
“There are some words you can say part of the time. Most of the time ‘ass’ is all right on television,” Mr. Carlin noted in his introduction to the then controversial monologue. “You can say, well, ‘You’ve made a perfect ass of yourself tonight.’ You can use ass in a religious sense, if you happen to be the redeemer riding into town on one — perfectly all right.”
He is survived by a daughter, Kelly Carlin McCall, and his second wife, Sally Wade. Carlin's first wife, Brenda, died in 1997.
"Religion is Bullshit":
Carlin was not my cup of tea; I always preferred the great comedians who were rooted in vaudeville or burlesque. Today's comedians are so lacking in the talent the great comics of the early- and mid-twentieth century had. The comics of the past worked for years and years and years in those traveling shows and constantly fine tuned their acts. That is why comedians like Jack Benny, Bob Hope, the Marx Brothers, Burns and Allen, and many others are still considered giants of their field. They had the talent and they had the preparation required to really succeed in a difficult field.
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