Word: sorting
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Dates: during 1960-1960
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...reacts like a pellet of pure sodium dropped in a glass of water, always has some fresh material for each new audience. There is usually some wild variation of the news, and a routine remark at a presidential press conference might come out as a caricature of the sort of bromide Sahl thinks the Administration is forever administering: ''The President says the Russians are terrified of the Turkish cavalry...
...Sahl, other new comedians can be cold enough to freeze the marrow, and are the real source of the term "sick comedians." Chief among them is Lenny Bruce, who whines, uses four-letter words almost as often as conjunctions, talks about rape and amputees, and deserves distinction of a sort for delivering the sickest single line on record. Taking a minority view of the Leopold-Loeb case, he said: "Bobby Franks was snotty." In a class by himself is Jonathan Winters, who finds material in such experiences as being tested for inguinal hernia, enjoys discussing what it is like...
Cool & Deep. Anxious not to be linked with that sort of thing, Mort Sahl insists that he will not say anything for a laugh: "I am not a sick comedian. I've never uttered a negative word in my life about the status of man, and I don't tell jokes about amputees." Mounting a platform of his own, Sahl adds: "Bad taste can't count as a form of insight." He also says he objects to "historical irreverence," and was disdainful when, in his Los Angeles acceptance speech, Jack Kennedy paraphrased Lincoln's second inaugural...
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...
California's Methodist Bishop Gerald Kennedy dismisses the movement. "In the past there have been movements of this sort, but they never did the church any good." But Seventh Day Baptist Paul Henry, a lawyer of Fontana, Calif., speaks for many of the "spirit-filled" when he says: "It's only my guess, but I think it may be an outpouring just before the termination of this...