The politics
of laughter

>> Stand-up legend Mort Sahl on presidential comedy, The Daily Show and why Hillary will be the last president of the United States

JABBING LEFT AND RIGHT: Sahl

by MATTHEW HAYS

On December 23, 1953, Mort Sahl, then an aspiring writer, took to the stage at San Francisco’s Hungry I Comedy Club. Up until that point, the club featured comedians who would crack jokes about their mothers-in-law or their wives’ bad cooking. But Sahl did something different: against the warnings of other comedians, he ascended to the stage with a daily newspaper in hand. He then read bits and pieces of it as part of his routine, pointing to the absurdities inherent in current events, in particular the inanity of American political culture.

It proved a huge success, but many didn’t like what Sahl was up to. Ed Sullivan forbade Sahl from making cracks about JFK on his show. Someone was listening, however; Sahl’s reputation grew, and he was hired by the Kennedy administration to write gags for the president. He was featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1960. When JFK was assassinated in 1963, Sahl’s fortunes would change, however. Many of the clubs where he had performed were now shunning political comedy as it was seen as too sensitive a time for such humour. Sahl has always been a prominent questioner of the sole-gunman theory, arguing that several people were involved with the murder of JFK. As part of his act, Sahl used to read parts of the Warren Commission report onstage, ridiculing it. For several years, the comedian was effectively blacklisted for his refusal to shut up about JFK and the questions surrounding his death.

Sahl’s brazen and topical humour set a new standard for comedy, paving the path for SNL’s Weekend Update, The Daily Show and The Onion. Having written jokes for both JFK and Ronald Reagan, Sahl has always contended that a political comic’s job is to call a candidate on their foibles, regardless of their ideological leanings. His famous line about the American political spectrum: “Liberals feel unworthy of their possessions. Conservatives feel they deserve everything they’ve stolen.” Sahl spoke to the Mirror from his California home in advance of his visit to Montreal, his birthplace.

Mirror: Over a half century ago, you got on stage and took a newspaper with you. Many people told you it wouldn’t work. Were you afraid when you first got up on that stage to do the newspaper routine?

Mort Sahl: I was as scared as anybody could be. Much of that was stage fright. But once the audience laughed at it, I remembered what Freud said: If you express what’s on their unconscious mind, you’ll always succeed because you’ve spoken for them. It was tough in the beginning. I was trying to be a writer. But the comics were all so illiterate they never understood the jokes. But I decided the audience was smarter than the comedians. Which I think is still true. Going your own way is always threatening to people.

Dead Kennedy

M: They shut down the Hungry I when JFK was shot.

MS: Yes, they did. Everything closed down. There was communal crying, led by Barbara Walter Cronkite on channel 2. The night Bobby [Kennedy] was shot, I insisted the clubs stay open. So we could talk about what kind of a country America is. A lot of Americans left. A lot of them went to Vancouver. Which is the way they dealt with the country, and the Vietnam War.

M: I love The Daily Show, but I find it hard at times to laugh at the war.

MS: I think that’s their fault. They’re presenting it in a way that you can laugh. They’re presenting it with moral superiority over Bush. New York liberals, acting like he’s dumb. It’s not political. I think they’re very insular. They’re probably all right-wing Democrats who drink with each other. It’s sophomoric in many ways, that show.

M: What are Jon Stewart and Michael Moore going to do when Bush is gone and if Hillary gets in? They’ve built their careers on Dubya.

MS: If Hillary is elected, they’ll give her a pass. They will not serve their country. They won’t go after her. That’s not their craft. The whole thing about The Daily Show is that it’s making fun of anchormen, of the press, not really politicians. If you’re gifted, you can work with any of them. I’ve worked with 10 presidents, eight elections. If you have a point of view, you can do it.

M: What do you think of Al Franken?

MS: He just curses a lot. He appears to be barbaric to Republicans, so people like him. As Ralph Nader pointed out recently, Republicans are people too. I did a dinner with Franken in New York a few years ago and the performance was pretty appalling. He didn’t know the date the president was murdered. He got the date wrong.

M: You’ve written jokes for various presidents, including Kennedy and Reagan. What was the best joke you ever wrote for a president?

MS: When Kennedy met with Khrushchev, and they talked about the space race, I told him to say, “My Germans can beat your Germans.” He got a laugh out of Khrushchev with that.

M: What do you think of the candidates running now?

MS: Did you see the Republican debate hosted by Chris Matthews? He asked them if they believed in evolution, and 10 of them said no. My question is, when you look at those 10 people, do you believe in evolution?

M: On The View, Joy Behar called the Republican candidates some of the great minds of the 19th century.

MS: Of course. She’s in New York, and she’s working for a liberal constituency. When I worked with her on Broadway, all of her jokes were about genitalia. She’s on that show because she’s safe.

M: What did you think of Rosie O’Donnell’s stint on the show?

MS: She threatened people around her. They were afraid they were going to lose the show and they would lose their paycheques. Look at the panel now. Good lord! They make a show from a woman’s perspective, for women, and this is what they come up with? Where are the qualified women?

Beyond the Borscht belt

M: What is it with the Jewish connection to comedy? So many of the important comedians have been Jewish.

MS: They’re not all Jews any more though. That generation has come and gone. One of the ironies is that the people who survived the Holocaust, the sons of their sons are not very political at all. They’re into materialism. Which is the great American panacea. Where’s my iPod? The money won’t save anybody, it never did.

M: Why the shift to the right in the Jewish community? So many of the neo-cons are Jewish.

MS: It comes with fear. They don’t want to lose what they’ve accumulated. The Jews used to be the pioneers who led the way. I saw their role as the conscience of the human race. If they don’t fulfill that, there isn’t any reason for them. One of the reasons for anti-Semitism around the world was because they were the conscience. They would tell people about the limits of human behaviour. I’m not sure that’s the case anymore.

M: Did you watch the Iranian president’s address at Columbia?

MS: Yes. The way the president of Columbia welcomed him, it was like he was too late for registration. But you know, no one’s looking at the history here. The U.S. sold $60-million in arms to get money for the Contras. To Iran! It’s all on the edge of hysteria, but it really doesn’t have anything to do with what’s going on. Hillary Clinton gave a bellicose speech on Fox News about it, saying he shouldn’t be allowed to speak. I don’t know what harm it does for someone to speak. If she’s the next president of the United States, that’ll be the last president of the United States.

M: Why do you say that?

MS: She’s unqualified. She’s riding on her husband, and I’m not sure he was qualified.

M: Less qualified than George W. Bush?

MS: I didn’t know it was a comparison. She’s a good example of what can happen to a woman when nobody loves her.

M: Ouch! You were born in Montreal. Are you going to do any Canadian jokes while back?

MS: Yes, it’ll be great to be back. I remember the last joke I told up there. National tragedy: Trudeau’s wife left him and Joe Clark’s wife won’t.