Updating Mort Sahl – Bringing Satirical Genius to 2011

Yes It is Hard to Satirize Real Events That Are Satirical All By Themselves

Mort Sahl was the first really hip satirically political humorist of the post World War II political scene.  His commentary was biting, it was sharp, and it was aimed at all sides.  Much of it was anti-Conservative, because even in the 1960's  if you were going to engage in political satire Conservatives provided almost all of the material.

Because Mr. Sahl is so good at what he did (yes, he is alive and is still doing things) The Dismal Political Economist has decided that he can do no better than to update some of Mr. Sahl’s commentary for the current scene.

[Editor’s Note:  The Dismal Political Economist was going to take credit for and present the updates as his own without mentioning Mr. Sahl until we caught him at it and made him stop.]

So here is the updated version of Mr. Sahl’s view of things, along with the text of the original.

Speaker of the House John Boehner is the kind of guy that if you were drowning 50 feet off shore, he’d throw you a 30 foot rope.  Then Mitch McConnell would go on Fox News the next night and say the Speaker had met you more than half way, and that you were just not willing to accept his compromise.

Nixon’s the kind of guy that if you were drowning 50 feet off shore, he’d throw you a 30 foot rope. Then Kissinger would go on TV the next night and say that the President had met you more than half-way. (1973)

George W. Bush won because he ran against Al Gore and John Kerry.  If he had run unopposed he would have lost.

Reagan won because he ran against Jimmy Carter. If he ran unopposed he would have lost.

The U.S. is having many of its industrial work practices being stolen by the Chinese.  If we are lucky, they will take them back to China and then they will have to start owing us money.

There are Russian spies here now. And if we're lucky, they'll steal some of our secrets and they'll be two years behind

In 1791 the country had 4 million people and had Jefferson, Washington, John and Abigail Adams, Franklin and Hamilton.  Today we have 300 million people and out of that number our leaders are Obama, Boehner, Biden, McConnell, Reid and Nancy Pelosi.  Maybe the Creationists are right, evolution cannot explain this.

Two hundred years ago, we had Jefferson, Washington, Ben Franklin, and Tom Paine, and there were four million people. Today we have 220 million, and look at our leaders…Darwin was wrong.