Rebels with applause: how stand-up political comedy stopped being subversive

Washington Monthly, April, 2003 by Matthew Cooper

Before the `50s rebels, Catskills culture dominated American comedy. It was a time, Nachman writes, "in which comedians, clad like bandleaders in spats and tuxes, sporting cap-and-bells names like Joey, Jackie, or Jerry, announced themselves by their brash, anything-for-a-laugh, charred-earth policy and by-the-jokebook gags. Catskill refugees, they were tummlers and shpritzers incubated in resorts, supper clubs, casinos." The old comedians did mother-in-law jokes; the new ones did JFK. The Catskillians wore suits; the new guys dressed casual. And the new ones often worked "blue," cursing. It's hard to imagine how staid sensibilities were at the time. Allan Sherman, who recorded G-rated comedy albums and song parodies--he's probably best known for "Hello Mudder, Hello Fadder"--was denounced by composer Richard Rodgers as "a destroyer." The Smothers Brothers' famed `60s TV show got canceled because of its long string of anti-war jokes but the proximate cause of their dismissal came when network censors freaked out over David Steinberg's bit about WASPs tossing Jonah to the whale.

What's interesting, after reading Nachman's book, is reflecting on how much political comedy today is essentially content-free. Leno or Jon Stewart may devote 15 minutes a night to a stand-up that's almost all politics and it's very funny, but it's essentially nihilist: "Those guys, what a bunch of idiots," is the subtext. There's nothing wrong with that, of course. Comedy shouldn't have to have a message. Art isn't propaganda, and most of the political humorists whom we admire from the past, Mark Twain or Will Rogers, for example, were in a similar vein--essentially mocking everything, albeit with a gentler mien. Still, what's notable is that we have more political humor and less rebellion. Dennis Miller's "rants" are curse-laden and hysterical, but there's nothing essentially dangerous or subversive about them.

The same can't be said for Mort Sahl or Lenny Bruce, who were considered outsized rebels at the time. Sahl faded into obscurity; he started, weirdly, to devote huge portions of his act to debunking the Warren Commission and came to be seen as a kind of conspiracy nut. Bruce, as anyone who's seen the Dustin Hoffman film Lenny knows, descended into an abyss of drugs, alcohol, and self-indulgence. His comic act became boring recitations of his troubles with police who would bust up his act as "obscene."

Still, in their day, they were rebels. Sahl took on political topics. Of Bobby Kennedy's wiretaps, he said: "Little brother is watching." He had the Borscht belt sexism and made it modern-day: "There are no women in the beat generation," he said, "just girls who have broken with their parents for the evening." Asked by Eddie Fisher on TV to say something funny, Sahl replied: "John Foster Dulles." His trademark sweater and loafers were considered shocking, and NBC forced him to wear a suit and tie on the "Wolgate Comedy Hour" before later relenting. And there was an elitism about his act: Peppering his shtick with pop culture from Motor Trend to Time, he'd get laughs by uttering a trendy phrase--communal guilt, group needs, or standard deviation--even if the audience wasn't quite sure what it meant.