At the time Carlin was relatively well known for tame satirical routines about the entertainment industry. His previous album FM & AM released the same year, showed that he was already drifting towards counter-culture icon, but Class Clown was a landmark. Besides musings about his youth, the album featured strongly directed remarks against the Vietnam War and his attachment to taboo topics. The album contains "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television", which became the focus of government harassment in the year that followed, and perhaps Carlin's most famous calling card. Carlin continued to explore the use of profanity for the rest of his career. While this skit prevents the album from being Carlin's only profanity-free one since 1971, it also marks the first time Carlin has used the word "fuck" in any of his recordings. In the liner notes, Carlin dedicates the album to Lenny Bruce, "for taking all the risks". He also lists all the nuns and priests that worked at Corpus Christi School which he had attended as a child, and who are spoken of at length through the album. In a 2004 appearance on Inside the Actors Studio, Carlin explained that, "I wanted people to know that the disrespect that I had for the dogmatic aspect, and for the inconsistency, and in a lot of cases the cruelty of Catholic doctrine, was tempered with an affection and a gratitude that I had for this wonderful setting that I considered like a garden... where they let me grow... be a creative person and think for myself there, so I kind of wanted to kind of illustrate that, and go, thanks and no thanks".
Release and reception
Reviewing the record in 1973 for Newday, Robert Christgau found Carlin's humor "organic" and wrote, "Like Bill Cosby, Carlin seems genuinely good-natured--his takeoffs on his old parochial school buddies are affectionate and respectful. This is probably why his political humor tends to go a little flat--he can't muster the sustained hostility it requires." Class Clown was reissued by Atlantic Records in 2000. It was also included as part of the 1992 Classic Gold collection, and The Little David Years box setin 1999. In 2016, the album was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry due to its "cultural, historic, or artistic significance."
