Mort Sahl

 Factlet (8)

  I just realized that I have not presented a Factlet this year. Here is one: Mort Sahl was born in Montreal. He just died in Mill Valley, California.  I did not know that he was Canadian-born and I did not know that he was still alive.  Perhaps you did not know about him at all and were surprised to see that he is on the cover of Time magazine on Aug.15, 1960. He was a rather caustic comedian who often appeared on college campuses. I doubt that now he would be allowed. 

   The Wikipedia entry for him is a good one and has already been updated. I have not seen a Canadian obituary yet, but here are some that will reveal more about the man.

From Variety - "Mort Sahl, Standup Comic With Biting Wit, Dies at 94," By Rick Schultz Oct.26,2021
“The three great geniuses of the period were Nichols and May, Jonathan Winters and Mort Sahl,” Woody Allen told New York magazine in 2008. Allen credited Sahl’s intellectual brand of humor for getting him into comedy. “He was the best thing I ever saw,” Allen said in another interview. “He totally restructured comedy. He changed the rhythm of the jokes.”

From The Guardian - ‘Funniest of them all’: Tributes Paid to Mort Sahl After Death Aged 94: Canadian-born Comedian Who Rose to Fame in the 1950s Credited with ‘yanking comedy into the modern age’ Oct. 27.
Robert B Weide, the executive producer of acclaimed comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm who filmed a documentary about Sahl said in tribute: “#MortSahl (1927-2021) was not only the most influential standup comic in the history of the medium, he remained, pound-for-pound, the funniest, most innovative comedian of them all, throughout his entire career.

From the BBC - "Mort Sahl: Legendary comedian and Satirist dies at Age 94,"
He was featured on the cover of Time Magazine in 1960, starred in several films and was a frequent guest host on Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show on NBC. He continued to perform stand up into his 80s, even after suffering a stroke. At age 80 he began teaching a course in critical thinking at Claremont McKenna College in California.

From: NPR - Elizabeth Blair, Oct.26
Long before Jon Stewart or Bill Maher, there was Mort Sahl. In the 1950s, while most comedians were telling jokes about in-laws, Sahl was ribbing politicians.

From the New York Times - Bruce Weber, Oct. 26. "Mort Sahl, Whose Biting Commentary Redefined Stand-Up, Dies at 94: A Self-appointed Warrior Against Hypocrisy, He Revolutionized Comedy in the 1950s by Addressing Political and Social Issues."
His own political leanings were difficult to track. The left wanted to claim him, especially early in his career, but they couldn’t quite do so. Among other things, he could be crudely sexist and, though he supported civil rights, he was acerbic in confrontation with knee-jerk liberal dogma on the subject.

Here are two items from the article above that will indicate why he would have a tough time if he was allowed on a campus today:

Sanctimony infuriated him: “Liberals are people who do the right things for the wrong reasons so they can feel good for 10 minutes.”

He was also in favour of capital punishment: “I’m for capital punishment,” he declared. “You’ve got to execute people — how else are they going to learn?”

Although those of you who would rather watch something than read something, have probably not made it this far, if you have, watch this YouTube lecture about the politics in the United States in 1967. Back then chalk and boards were used rather than decks and PowerPoint. Stick with it. It is really quite good and it was likely done 'live'.  He even remarks about dating at the end. 

The Bonus: 
   Since all the sources you need are provided above, I will skip to the bonus which is Factlet (9). To get right to it: In 1968, the average story on network news was 60 seconds; by 2004 it had shrunk to less than eight seconds, paving the way to today’s 280-character tweet. 
   I happened to watch (attempted to watch) the U.S. network news the other evening and saw that fact in quick action. The announcer indicated that a compelling story was coming right after another ad for another health product of some sort. I waited and when he returned, the compelling story was no longer than the announcement about it. I think there was also a picture. 
  Given that this post is also rather short, I will provide the source for Factlet (9) which also includes some more Factlets.
   It is found, along with many others, in Wildland: The Making of America's Fury, by Evan Osnos. Here are some of the others:
Osnos’s keen journalist’s eye is always on the watch for the shocking statistic. Here is a sampling. Whereas in 1964, 77 percent of Americans said they generally trusted the government, by 2014, only 18 percent did. In 1965, the average CEO’s salary was 20 times the front-line worker’s; by 2019 it was 278 times larger....In the June following George Floyd’s murder, Americans bought almost 4 million guns, more than any other month in U.S. history. Greenwich’s Golden Triangle district gave Trump a 13-point victory over Joe Biden in 2020, compared with only two points in 2016. The 34 Republican senators who blocked Trump’s second impeachment represented just 14.5 percent of the U.S. population.

I have not read the book, although I did read the piece about Greenwich in The New Yorker. The above is found in a review of the book by Lizbeth Cohen in the Washington Post, "Between 9/11 and Jan. 6, Fundamental Shifts and Deep Fractures." For more reviews see: "Wildland Review: Evan Osnos on the America Trump Exploited, Charles Kaiser, Sun 19 Sep 2021, The Guardian and "Two Authors View America From Above and Below, and Are Not Happy With What They See, "By Angus Deaton, Oct. 1, 2021, the New York Times. 

Postscript: For new readers I will just say that a Factlet is better than a Factoid. For example, see Factlet (7) which is about compulsory swimming tests on some U.S. campuses, where some standards remain for some things. The BONUS found there is that they used to take NUDE photos at some Ivies and that there are actually some "Canadian Ivies."