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  • 2001-03-19 (xsd:date)
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  • Did George Carlin Pen 'The Paradox of Our Time'? (en)
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  • This story made its way to Snopes HQ way back in 1999: In May 1998, Jeff Dickson posted the 'Paradox of Our Time' essay to his Hacks-R-Us online forum, loosing it upon the Internet. That essay has since spread far and wide and has commonly been attributed to a variety authors, including comedian George Carlin, an unnamed Columbine High School student, the Dalai Lama, and that most prolific of scribes, Anonymous. George Carlin very emphatically denied he had had anything to do with Paradox, a piece he referred to as a sappy load of shit, and posted his comments about being associated with this essay on his own web site. (The line about His wife recently died which was added to many forwarded versions referenced Brenda Carlin, the comedian's wife, who passed away on 11 May 1997 of liver cancer. Carlin himself died in June 2008.) The true author of the piece isn't George Carlin, Jeff Dickson, or the Dalai Lama, nor is he anonymous. Credit belongs to Dr. Bob Moorehead, former pastor of Seattle's Overlake Christian Church (who retired in 1998 after 29 years in that post). This essay appeared under the title The Paradox of Our Age in Words Aptly Spoken, Dr. Moorehead's 1995 collection of prayers, homilies, and monologues used in his sermons and radio broadcasts: In 1999 this piece also picked up an attribution to an unnamed student who witnessed the killings at Littleton in the aftermath of the 20 April 1999 Columbine shootings, while America was still struggling to make sense of that day's horrific events. The killings at Columbine shook us deeply, leaving behind a nation of survivors looking for the one set of answers which could begin to explain the horrifically inexplicable. Having this essay flow from the pen of an unnamed student who bore witness to this unspeakable act of violence made sense: surely such a teen would have valuable words of wisdom or cautions we all should heed. The oft-repeated header A Columbine High School student wrote infused the essay with the significance and meaning folks thirsted for. (en)
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