Isn’t having a smoking section in a restaurant like having a peeing section in a swimming pool?

Carlin uses a deliberately crude analogy to argue that partial segregation doesn’t solve a shared-environment problem. A “smoking section” implies smoke can be contained, but in reality it drifts through the same air everyone breathes—just as urine disperses through the same pool water. The joke’s force comes from collapsing a socially tolerated nuisance (secondhand smoke) into a universally recognized contamination, exposing what he sees as the illogic and hypocrisy of accommodating smoking in public spaces. It also reflects Carlin’s broader comedic method: using blunt, bodily comparisons to puncture polite euphemisms and challenge conventional public policy compromises.