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Will Rogers gets his own Google Doodle…

12:20 PM EST on November 4, 2019

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If I could pick three comedians to come back from the grave and muse about our 21st century culture, I'd pick Bill Hicks, George Carlin and Will Rogers…and then fully expect them all to be cancelled within 24 hours.

Seriously, wouldn't you love to have Bill Hicks piece together a brilliant Twitter thread about social influencer phonies and the Like economy — only to have it hijacked by angry college students who discovered his brilliant stand-up sets savaged everyone, which is now wrong according to today's puritanical, free-speech-stifling standards.

Wait. They're already doing that, and the guy has been dead for 25 years. Go figure.

You have to admit, it would be nice to have George Carlin come back from Hell to share his observations on Donald Trump, smartphone addiction and LifeChurch.TV.INFO.RU. I'm sure the safe space folks who shared this out-of-context interview clip from 1990 of Carlin critiquing Andrew Dice Clay for "punching down" would love that... until they learned Carlin also thought political correctness was nothing more than "fascism pretending to be manners."

And, of course, who wouldn't want to hear Will Rogers come back from the grave to tell his folksy political jokes and laugh at the irony that his home state named an airport after him...only to be sent back to the grave after everyone learned he wore blackface in the 1937 movie "In Old Kentucky." Although that was – sadly – a culturally acceptable thing to do in our country's more-racist past, we must now judge his actions by today's 21st-century rules and standards. That's how things work now, right?

While you crack your knuckles and prepare to leave a comment, I'll get to the thing that made me go on this rant. Google is honoring Will Rogers with a doodle today to celebrate his 140th birthday.

Via KTUL:

Google is honoring Oklahoma's most famous cowboy with a new Doodle.

Monday is the Native American actor, humorist, author, filmmaker, and public personality Will Rogers' 140th birthday.

His childhood home near Oologah is now a museum open to the public.

There will be third-graders from Oologah performing at the Will Rogers Birthplace Ranch Monday at 9 a.m.

His legacy also lives on through the 19,000 square foot Will Rogers Memorial Museum in Claremore, and in honor of his birthday, admission is free.

I usually don't get to Claremore, but if I ever do, I'm going to have to stop by that museum. Will Rogers may be one of the greatest humorists to ever walk this planet and he's an Oklahoman, which probably means we're related. You can check out a full cache of his ancient quotes that still ring true today at The Tulsa World. Or if you want to see his Google Doodle, go to our new TLO spin-off – GoOgle.com

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