COMEDIANS: The Third Campaign

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"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 is no court jester to the Democrats; he often wounds Democrats and often amuses many Republicans (among them: Herb Brownell); he picks off any and all targets in what Kennedy last week called "his relentless pursuit of everybody." The Heavy Steel. As a topical satirist, Sahl has relatively few U.S. models to draw on. Stunted by frequent periods of political apathy on the one hand and by a chronic, expanding-frontier optimism on the other, political satire has never particularly thrived in the U.S., with some notable exceptions.

In 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 by his light touch when he contemplated politics, though he contributed a pair of memorable definitions: a Senator is someone who "makes laws in Washington when not doing time"; and "public office is private graft."

Finley Peter Dunne, whose Mr. Dooley is the alltime choice of many political 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."