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Feature
Comedy’s Lion in Winter
The great Mort Sahl is alive and well and performing near San Francisco.
(Page 3 of 3)
Sahl prefers Sarah Palin to Tina Fey. “One is a dame and the other is ambitious. I think Sarah Palin is a girl” — his highest compliment for a woman; “I like women who are girls first.” He adds, “This whole thing with Palin, among comedians, is class discrimination. ‘How dare she raise her voice?’ It’s not what Palin says. It’s that she doesn’t qualify — they qualify. It shows the desperation of liberals to single her out. She’s not the enemy but they divert you with their disdain of Palin.” He snorts, “The female liberationists won but they didn’t get anything they wanted.”
Not that conservatives can take much solace from Sahl: “Rush Limbaugh becomes more and more bombastic. As for Glenn Beck, Roger Ailes has gotta be desperate.” Sahl overrules the Supreme Court: “You can’t even discuss it — it’s totally irrelevant. The Chief Justice was a third-rate lawyer for Reagan.”
Sahl’s comments are laced with more lethal toxicity than before, with an occasional tendency to rant. His tone swings between bewildered dismay and outraged disgust. “Liberals destroyed this country. Nader is very much on target about Obama — he’s a concessionary president, very passive, too measured. He’s addressing me from behind a lectern. He’s a cutout liberal. But liberals are totally confused by Obama.” With surgical precision, Sahl says, “Obama knew that liberals would feel ignoble if they didn’t vote for a black man, so when he came to office half his job was done for him — but he hasn’t done the other half. Think what he might have accomplished if he had a birth certificate!”
THE ASTONISHING THING about Sahl is that he calls himself an optimist despite his disenchantment with America and his ups and downs professionally, politically, and personally (his son, Mort Jr. — “My best pal” — died at 19). He relishes putting on the gloves for ideological combat for its own sake — and for his, and our, amusement, accompanied by grimaces and chortles at cherished lines preserved in mothballs. Indeed, he compares current left-right politics to “a boxing match promoted by Don King. The champion is a bum so you put up another bum and you pretend it’s gonna be a struggle. It’s a fake reality show, like Keeping Up with the Kardashians.‘ ”
Yet for all his satirical venom and tough talk, he doesn’t come off as a hater. Mainly he’s a disillusioned romantic, politically and, well, romantically. Sahl’s favorite theme after politics is love — the loss of it, both for America and in women, few of whom met his standard of female excellence (“I kept lookin’, pal, I kept lookin’ ”). Sahl went out with actresses he called “female impersonators,” but now calls them all “scared small-town girls.” Among his regrets, “I’m sorry I divorced Kenslea; I’m still in love with my wife. If you love a woman it’ll make her a better woman.” His second wife, China Lee, the first Asian Playboy foldout, whom he twice divorced, always said Sahl thought of America as a woman who had betrayed him. That sounds about right.
About the Author
Gerald Nachman is a writer in San Francisco and most recently the author of Right Here on Our Stage Tonight!: Ed Sullivan’s America (University of California Press).
Letter to the Editor View all comments (27) | Leave a comment
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Midnight| 4.27.11 @ 6:31AM
This is the best, most original culture piece on AmSpec for some time -- and not because the competition is weak; it is fierce. Well done.
Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 4.27.11 @ 7:41AM
Ditto!
Stormzeye| 4.27.11 @ 6:55AM
I am sick and tired of romantics like Mort Sahl who have become disillusioned by the liberal/progressive crap they peddled for so long and now find lacking. He was a large part of the liberal's destruction of our way of life in coastal America through their self-importance, ridicule and cynicism. These people were and still remain uninformed, jejune and boring. Nothing to see here, keep moving.
coal carrier| 4.27.11 @ 8:20AM
Ditto!
mames| 4.27.11 @ 10:22AM
Call me old fashioned but guys with 3 ex wives are always suspect to me, including Rush whose work I admire but whose juvenile tastes and personal life is disappointing and quite sad.
oldfart| 4.27.11 @ 7:05AM
Even though I have no love for the man the country needs people that will give it a good swift kick in the backside, from all sides. Based on what is at the top now we need a new Samuel Clemens, Will Rogers and yes - a Mort Sahl, to keep the self importance of the elite in check.
mames| 4.27.11 @ 10:24AM
Mort is the self important elite.
Mike W| 4.27.11 @ 8:34AM
Why is the article on TAS? Who really gives a flying foxtrot about what some old washed up comedian has to say?
SPQR | 4.27.11 @ 8:44AM
The best article ever on TAS, or even back when it was called The Alternative! Thank you so much.
Duncan | 4.27.11 @ 9:16AM
Great article! Only 3 great American political satirists, Twain, Rogers and Sahl. In their own ways, all still relevant. I'm just glad that Sahl is alive and still out there doing what he has always done so well. Any negative comments will only come because of ignorance of the man and his work.
DWS from Weeeest Virginny| 4.27.11 @ 10:03AM
Good article. Anyone who can say, "She [Palin] doesn't bother me. To this [liberal] crowd, she's the lady that comes over and does the laundry. They think she's not entitled. But she's not the enemy. Who's sending us to war? It's the third term of George Bush.", is not washed up. Sahl's political jibes that deflate all pretenders to the throne are much needed. Sure, I don't agree with all he says but I do with some of it and I like the fact that he call 'em as he sees 'em--even if he's wrong. Heck, who could do any better? Today we are too prone to like someone only if we think they're a carbon copy of ourselves. We look for "soulmates" not for those trying to tell the truth. This is another example of the decline of our civilization.
Citizen Jerry| 4.27.11 @ 10:18AM
It takes an extremely bold leap of faith to believe that Mort Sahl is even remotely funny.
Jeff R| 4.27.11 @ 10:28AM
Funny is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose. Sahl had his moments, in my estimation, where he was insightful and funny. Other times, he came across as preachy.
I'd say Sahl's take on today's dumb-downed pop culture is on target, though.
Oh, and Mort, modern technology and analysis has pretty much discounted multiple gunmen felling JFK.
dale emde| 4.27.11 @ 11:16PM
have lived in the bay area since the 50's. always admired Sahl and his pithiness. never saw him in person. And if you think JFK was killed by one man with one bullet, where have you been since the Warren Report?????
ejp| 4.27.11 @ 12:27PM
Let me see if I get this right. We're supposed to celebrate the fact that guys like Sahl decided that instead of just entertaining an audience, they should "enlighten" us? That's never going to be something I thnk we should celebrate, epecially because guys like Sahl paved the way for comedians to be so blatantly ideological for the left and at the same time not get pegged as the left, thus making it possible for the likes of Saturday Night Live etc. to be so blatantly one-way in its "satire" etc.
As for Sahl and the JFK assassination, saying he is vindicated because of what polls think is the lamest thing I have seen written here. The fact that Sahl was giving free publicity to a despicable creep named Jim Garrison is what should give pause, and the fact that any honest historical study shows that Oswald, a lone communist, did indeed act alone, is what ought to count more than what polls think as far as lionizing Sahl on this point goes.
dale emde| 4.27.11 @ 11:21PM
ejp, you're completely out of your mind. You and Jeff R had better start using your computers to research JFK's murder. It's all there and you both are wrong, wrong, wrong!
Zazzu| 4.27.11 @ 1:25PM
What a sad fellow. I felt a depressive tug at my spirit just reading about this guy.
Wayne | 4.27.11 @ 1:46PM
I disagree, I loved Mort Sahl. He was funny and insightful. I would love seeing him today. I think there were some very under-rated comics from that period. Another was Steve Allen, Winters a third.
What they had was intelligence. It gave them an understanding of human nature. Today we have sound-bites instead. Political correctness has destroyed comedy.
mames| 4.27.11 @ 2:09PM
Sahl could be humorous but Allen and Winters were spontaneous and inventive. to quote Allen as the TV reporter; "a family of seven avoided serious injury on our highways tonight by being killed.... outright." dark and funny
ConantheContrarian| 4.27.11 @ 2:21PM
So anything to the right of Stalin is fascist (Dennis Miller). I want to spew vomit every time I hear a lefty call someone a fascist. Mort Sahl is a walking contradiction.
DANSHANTEAL| 4.27.11 @ 4:59PM
DYNAMIC ARTICLE. REMEMBER HIM WELL. A CAUSTIC WIT. A MEMBER OF THE 'A' TRAIN. HOW SAD HE WAS SO RIGHT ON JFK.
Roy| 4.27.11 @ 6:29PM
a) Who?
b) All the listed attacks on the left are complaining that it isn't left enough.
Negro X| 4.27.11 @ 6:33PM
Another old liberal who has finally awoken and found that the madness he help to create isn't to his liking.
dale emde| 4.27.11 @ 11:26PM
everyone on the air ways is now using awoken. whatever happened to awakened which is so much more euphonius ?
JamesG| 4.28.11 @ 11:04AM
Too bad he besmirches himself by expressing admiration for Che, a mass murderer.
marshcope| 4.29.11 @ 12:22AM
Mort was on CNN with Larry King several years ago, and he was not funny at all. Kinda like Jack Parr when he tried a comeback once--the Funny wasn't there any more. Thinking of great American humorists, let us not forget Peter Finley Dunne in the Gilded Age, and Abe Lincoln's favorite humorist--Petroleum V. Nasby.
Creative Recreation | 8.10.11 @ 9:44PM
is good