Per Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller’s “Dwell from New York: The Full, Uncensored Historical past of Saturday Night time Dwell as Informed by Its Stars, Writers, and Company,” Dave Tebet, NBC’s head of expertise, refused to permit Carlin to host the episode in a t-shirt. Tebet had been supportive of the present, so Michaels felt obliged to honor this request. As Michaels instructed Shales and Miller:

“The concern was that if George was in a T-shirt and it regarded just like the incorrect type of present, we’d lose associates, and we weren’t wherever close to one hundred pc because it was. And the compromise was a go well with with a T-shirt as a substitute of a tie. That was a a lot higher distraction than can probably be understood proper now.”

SNL affiliate producer Craig Kellem known as Tebet “the Don Corleone of community executives,” and remembered the imperious go well with demanding that Carlin get a haircut and put on socks — which, within the permissive period of the Seventies, was not a excessive precedence for Boomer community execs, not to mention a hellraiser like George Carlin.

Finally, Carlin wore a go well with and t-shirt, so he regarded good whereas delivering his well-known anti-war monologue concerning the variations between baseball and soccer. He was additionally so baked out of his gourd that he could not take part in any of the sketches. Level: Carlin.