MORTIFIED by a Sahlty Tea-Bagger

I was sitting in the audience and Woody Allen was introducing Mort: "He never disappoints..."

It was true then. A dozen years ago. Now? Maybe he doesn't disappoint if you're a tea bagger. Otherwise, it's pretty disappointing to see somebody whose act still includes anecdotes about Alexander Haig...and who "tweets" the same opinionated un-funny drivel you might hear from any grumpy redneck grandpa after too much beer.

Where's the Sahlty wit here? There's not even any personality behind these numb one-liners. Dennis Miller, the conservative right wing's favorite hipster, would at least have tossed in some improbable hyperbole.

I'm not saying that the pun on "The Bitter Tea of General Yen" is anything to be proud of, but it beats "Mort Sahl is doing nothing," which is how this piece could be titled. He's doing nothing but tarnishing a reputation for being a satirist and an iconoclast. There's nothing too iconoclastic about being in the same fetid Carnival Cruise ship with Rush Limbaugh. There's nothing funny about appealing to couples who look like the models for "American Gothic," only with rifles hidden behind their backs instead of pitchforks.

"Jack Kennedy gave his life for nothing. He died and you did nothing."

Well, Mort if he gave his life for nothing, maybe HE did nothing, too.

Although screwing Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy (among others) is a pretty good waste of time.

Sort of like screwing Phyllis Kirk and Playboy centerfold China Lee?

Mort of course, did more than just treat women like sports cars...to be ridden and then traded in. He went to work for Garrison after Kennedy died. The results of this was no definitive answer to who killed Kennedy. "He died and you did nothing" could be directed, posthumously, at Garrison...a bony finger pointing at his grave.

Who did Mort tweet this to? Every fan who read it. That kind of mean-spirited bitterness is, to quote another political fossil once considered amusing and now barely remembered, Ross Perot: "that's just sad."

Admittedly, it's tough now for a Mort or a Jackie Mason to have much of an audience, now that Leno, Letterman, Kimmel, Colbert and Stewart give us all the political jokes and social put-downs we need...no cover no minimum. These guys don't need to book the old-time comics, and are not prone too if some of them are going to sit there recycling gags, using out of date references, or just sitting there with a twitchy upper lip and nervous laughter because they aren't up on things the way Bill Maher or Dennis Miller are.

Tweeting is supposed to show that you're still out there ready to fly into town...not that you're stuck at home with a surplus of the eggs you laid. The sulfurous remarks that Mort passes off as something worth reading are no better than the comments that cranks leave on newspaper websites.

You'd expect any anonymous goon to follow an article on Obama with "Who on Earth does this government serve?" or "He couldn't play the president in a school play." You expect more from somebody who was once on the over of Time magazine...even if that was 53 years ago.