Word: mort
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quot;Right!", echoes an almost fanatical following-dedicated fans who are sure that by Election Day Comedian Mort Sahl will have reduced the major candidates to little more than a 5 o'clock shadow and a few odd wisps of singed hair. Often introduced in nightclubs as "the next President of the United States," Sahl is unlikely this year to achieve his stated ambition to overthrow the Government. That will take time. His audience is still narrow and his appeal is anything but universal. But he is the freshest comedian around; he is a permanent and popular attraction...
Revolt Against Pomposity. In the view of his followers, Mort Sahl represents a new and growing feeling, described rather breathlessly by Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. as "a mounting restlessness and discontent, an impatience with clichés and platitudes, a resentment against the materialist notion that affluence is the answer to everything, a contempt for banality and corn-in short, a revolt against pomposity. Sahl's popularity is a sign of a yearning for youth, irreverence, trenchancy, satire, a clean break with the past...
...Mort Sahl is young, irreverent, and trenchant. With one eye on world news and the other on Variety, he is a volatile mixture of show business and politics, of exhibitionistic self-dedication and a seemingly sincere passion to change the world. The best of the New Comedians, he is also the first notable American political satirist since Will Rogers...
...These people in Washington must know what they're doing or they wouldn't be there," he declared in tones of grudging admiration; then, turning the worm, he added: "And they're not there." On the same theme, Mort announced: "President Eisenhower is in charge of everything-whenever Nixon leaves the country." Picking off the mighty and famous, Sahl got the surprise of the week when his angriest foe turned out to be his TV sponsor, California Millionaire Bart Lytton (Lytton Savings & Loan Association). A Kennedy backer.* Lytton simmered in the control booth as Sahl and guests...
Eagerly sharpening knives for the Republican Convention in Chicago and for the campaign after that, Mort knows that he is under pressure. "I have only a few months to tell these jokes," he points out, "before they become treason...