COMEDIANS: The Third Campaign

(9 of 9)

Mort Sahl built his original audience of students who came in from the University of California and other regional campuses to hear him in San Francisco. No such common denominator applies any more; his following has increased to multitudes, mainly in the big cities, which he has, in his own word, "saturated" by long stands of up to six months. He calls his followers "my people." Some have peach fuzz on their cheeks, and others have it on the tops of their heads. The one thing they share is a fondness for articulate irony and a sense of feeling "in." Occasional strays get up and walk out muttering "Communist," but the in-group would all understand the college freshman who says, "He has a cool way of digging deep." There is an out-group too, people who find Sahl too brash and offensive. Warmth is simply not his gift, but this is not to say, as is often claimed, that he is a nihilist or that he hates everything. "His people" see him as the black knight of the implied positive—an idealist whose darkly critical moods really imply a yearning for perfection. "If I criticize somebody, it's only because I have higher hopes for the world," he says in a solemn moment, "something good to replace the bad." And, he might have added, because high hopes in a bad world are invariably good for a laugh.

Working toward his goal as he sees it, Sahl has night by night over the past decade compiled a strong anthology of criticisms, a sort of Sahl's-eye view of the less-than-fabulous fifties (see box). "Nobody here is proud of our times, although you hear a lot about our way of life," Sahl points out. "I'm not saying what the Beat Generation says: 'Go away because I'm not involved.' I'm here and I'm involved."

His involvement for the next few months will be with the 1960 presidential campaign, and, as always, he is facing the stump with a two-edged adz. "It's all over but the doubting," says Mort Sahl. "My considered opinion of Nixon versus Kennedy is that neither can win."