Word: sahl
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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...
...Whenever there is a political bloat, Mort sticks a pin in it," says Hubert Humphrey. Among his constituents Sahl counts Adlai Stevenson, who sees him regularly when Sahl is in Chicago. Says Adlai: "I dote on him." Sahl contributed a joke bank that John Kennedy drew on for his witty performance at last November's Al Smith Dinner, once discouraged a Nixon worker who approached him for a similar purpose. As for President Eisenhower, he has never heard of Mort Sahl -possibly because the comedian refers to Press Secretary Jim Hagerty as "Ike's right foot." But Sahl...
...colonial America, Thomas Morton had the undiluted, courage to hate Puritans and say so, calling little Miles Standish "Captain Shrimp." Between Thomas Morton and Morton Sahl, most political satirists shielded themselves with pseudonyms and fought with fairly heavy steel. Charles Farrar Browne, city editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, set himself up in mid-19th century as the cracker-box philosopher Artemus Ward, announced that the D.C. after Washington stood for "Desprit Cusses," and advised President Lincoln to fill his Cabinet with show-business types since they would know how to cater to the public. Mark Twain was often deserted...
...connoisseurs, swaddled his man in an Irish dialect that magically permitted him to speak his mind. He once called John D. Rockefeller "a kind iv society f'r th' prevention iv croolty to money," and had a skill at reworking slogans that has turned up again in Sahl. "Hands acrost th' sea and into somewan's pocket," said Dooley. Sahl rallied for Ike with the line: "He kept us out of Mars...