> I believe that Sahl endorsed Al Haig in the '88 Sweepstakes. Dunno if
> it was
>
>supposed to be a joke, but even if it wasn't, it was.
>
>There's a tendency among older comics to act as judge/jury/executioner for
>the younger crowd. Mostly it's out of jealousy or resentment, and most times
>it's hypocritical (Buddy Hackett used to moan on the Carson show about the
>"blue comics" that were supposedy ruining the business, then he'd appear in
>Vegas doing profanity-laden routines, usually based on dick jokes). Once in
>a while an older comic gets it and approves -- Rodney Dangerfield is like
>that, having backed the likes of Andy Kaufman and Sam Kinison.
>
That's sort of to be expected: I mean, people are gonna _ask_ the older
comedians about the "new breed," whatever it might be. And the business
sort of encourages the bitterness. Comics of Hackett's generation busted
their humps in strip bars and other dives before they even got remotely
near a big room in Vegas. They've established themselves under one set
of rules. Then, suddenly, the times change, and young'uns like Carlin
and Pryor are getting all of this _critical attention_.
Even those comics have had to face changing times: Carlin and Pryor and Lily Tomlin and lots of others got some good props for being on the liberal-left end of things. Suddenly in the Eighties, we started getting comics with a real reactionary edge to them, like Kinison or Andrew Dice Clay. (Pryor and Tomlin had pretty much moved away from standup, but Carlin was really re-energized by Kinison.) And comedy had, by that time, turned into a real industry, so _anyone_ who'd come up before the career paths had been established was going to feel a little of that "Fucking kids have it easy" resentment.
The strange thing about Sahl, to me, isn't just the political issue. What matters to me is whether the guy can make me laugh. I mean, I probably wouldn't have agreed with Sam Kinision on trade imbalances or the Gulf War, but the guy made me laugh harder than damn near any other comedian I can think of.
And Sahl's style these days seems amazingly recycled. I wish I could cite a specific example, but every time I've heard him over the past twenty years or so, I have the sense that he'd been made the same jokes about Kennedy or Johnson or Eisenhower. It's like hearing the same old line about a politician "doing to his wife what he's been doing to the rest of the country."