Stand-up comedian George Carlin, whose routine about forbidden words on the airwaves led to a key Supreme Court decision on government broadcast oversight, died of heart failure near Los Angeles. He was 71. Carlin had been admitted to the hospital earlier in the day with chest pains. He launched to fame in the 1960s as a straightlaced, suit-and-tie comedian appearing on programs like the Ed Sullivan Show as characters like the "hippie-dippie weatherman." By the 1970s, he was doing more risque material in long hair and jeans, and his performance of the routine "Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television" prompted an obscenity trial in Milwaukee, plus the Supreme Court fight, which arose from the airing of a similar routine on the radio in New York and an FCC fine.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Carlin's comedy became both sharper as social commentary and emotionally darker, sounding even, at times, bitter. The comedian was treated for alcohol addiction after a fight with an audience at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas in 2004.

Below, Carlin's 1990 routine (NSFW) on how euphemisms undermine discourse in America. Post your own favorite routines in the comments.

[AP, Times]