Eh, I think that as we often see, the second concern isn't overblown.
Humor (comedy) serves many social purposes; while the first I mentioned (the ratification of social status through the use of demeaning or bullying rhetoric; or to create a sense of otherness) is terrible, there are many positive uses of humor that can often get unfairly swept up.
And, tbh, it is often the lowest common denominator, aka, those without a sense of humor, who are most likely to miss the point entirely. And because humor can be subtle, counterintuitive, sarcastic, ironic, subtextual, and often forces people to understand a broader context, it can be easily misunderstood.
Yeah, you could think that. But you could also look carefully at what Carlin does, and what he did in the overall context of that extended riff.
First, he sets up the overall idea. (Americans are dumb)
Then, he gets the complicity of the audience. This is a common Carlin maneuver- I'm not talking about you, the audience, I'm talking about those other people.
Then he mocks a subject with exaggerated language. (Consumers as mindless, fat people buying and eating)
....At this point, the audience is laughing at THE OTHER (the dumb Americans).
Then he wraps the joke around to the real point. The moneyed business interests. The ones that are screwing people. The ones that are screwing Americans.
....the ones that you don't even notice.
So the people you were laughing at? That's you. And you didn't even notice. It's a classic structure Carlin often employs - get the audience buy in, get the audience laughing at a target, reveal the actual target, show the audience that they have really been laughing at themselves. Admittedly, it goes right by some people who never really get the point, or the real humor (see also, Chappelle ending his original show because he saw that, increasingly, people weren't understanding the actual joke), but it's right there.
And it would be a shame if we let censorious individuals reduce this to a "I think he was being mean to fat people."
Now, maybe I'm giving Carlin too much credit. But I don't think so. People can certainly argue about whether this is his best execution of this form (very few people would say that this period was his best work), but that's a much different conversation than whether or not this is just some fat jokes, or whether Carlin sufficiently explains the root causes of obesity.
