Moonbat and octogenarian Mort Sahl was offered a job at Claremont McKenna this semester. Oh why, oh why, oh why?
Because the school has a fascination with left-wing entertainers.
To quote CMC's website,
This fall the College welcomed political satirist Mort Sahl into the classroom to teach the course The Revolutionary’s Handbook.Sounds pretty moderate to me. What's next? Maoism 101? How to YouTube the Revolution? (Oh wait, I think Pitzer already took that one.)
But let's hear from Sahl himself, or at least through what he's quoted as saying in The Boston Globe's Entertainment Section. (Notice a trend here, entertainers belong in the entertainment section, not academia!)
[Sahl's] course, which he says is called "The Revolutionary's Handbook," is about critical thinking in contemporary politics. "I want them to detect bias and realize that just going along with popular media, they won't know anything about their country," he says. "They won't know a thing about it."While we're on the subject, let's talk about Mort's views and biases. Putting aside that he hates on conservatives from George W. Bush to Einsenhower -- this in a place with ideological diversity!-- he's got some weird obsessions. Will these come out in the classroom where he hopes to teach students to be "critical" (read: liberal) thinkers?
After the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, Sahl became obsessed with exposing what he regarded as the cover-up of the Warren Commission (which claimed that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone), and devoted to years working with New Orleans DA Jim Garrison, trying to prove that the assassination was a conspiracy involving the CIA.The Toronto Star had a piece today on Sahl's long career mocking the powers that be, but it wasn't in the news section. It was pure entertainment section --exactly where CMC will end up if it allows anymore celebrity comedian professors.
And these days, you can call him Professor Sahl. At Claremont McKenna College on the fringes of L.A., he's teaching students how to be subversive and distrust information from official sources.Just how many articles has Sahl written in peer-reviewed journals? How many books in peer-reviewed publications? When he gets the credentials, I'll call him Professor.
True, Sahl wrote for a few speeches for the Kennedy Administration, but Pat Buchanan wrote some for the Reagan Administration and William Safire wrote a few for the Nixon Administration. Do you honestly think CMC would give Safire or Buchanan a classroom?
Exit questions: Why does someone who has spent his whole life mocking authority think he can teach teenagers -- the very kings of mocking authority? How will Claremont McKenna avoid being at the butt of this joke?
Subscribe in a reader
4 comments:
See Charles, this is the part I don't get. You sing in praise of extremists such as Shlais and at the same time shoot down people like Sahl for their extremism. Don't let biases get the better of you, you're a smart guy and people listen to what you have to say. Don't use your brains for extremist propaganda and viewpoints because thats what hitler and the terrorists do.
(i forgot to mention you're unfounded criticism of Gore Vidal)
CMC should be honored to have Mort Sahl on campus. To borrow from Hillary Clinton's book title, he is truly living history. More important than his speechwriting for Kennedy was his invovlement in Jim Garrison's investigation of JFK's assasintation. By helping in that effort, he was doing something truly revolutionary. I don't buy all of the conspiracy theories that he presents to the class-- but he isn't expecting that of us. He's is opening the eyes of blissful, optimistic government students who think that democracy (especially American democracy) is always good and for the people...and all that mushy stuff that de Tocqueville and Publius hold so dear. He is instilling doubt in his students...and making sure that they question society and their government.
Charles, I am a friend of Mort Sahl. I know lots of Professors, Yale, Harvard, Fulbright Scholars etc.
Mort is far and away the brightest person when it comes to Politics that I have ever encountered. He did not "just write a few speeches for President Kennedy. He also worked for Ross Perot, and, would you believe it, Ronald Reagan. So, before you make assertions, as a student at a fine College, you might want to do more research. And, as to the accusation that Mort is a "Moonbat" and a "liberal", you could not be further off the mark. Mort dislikes Liberals more than Conservatives (or, in the case of NeoCons, Fascists) because he feels that they paved the way for what we have today, the National Security State, and that at least Conservatives are more honest about from whence they come. So, Mort is not a liberal, and you insult him with that particular epithet/designation. What did Mort do? He changed the face of Modern Comedy, that is what he did. There is a reason his face is on the cover of "Seriously Funny", by Gerald Nachman, a scholarly tome about Comedians of the Fifties and Sixties. Mort changed the face of comedy, literally. Before him, it was mother-in-law jokes, vaudeville really. It is not an exaggeration to state that the lineage in satire is Mark Twain, Will Rogers, and then Mort Sahl. Woody Allen, and numerous others were inspired, or received their breaks from or because of Mort. So Mort, in the 1960's when the dollar was still worth something, was making in excess of one million dollars a year. When District Attorney Jim Garrison made the brave move of suing the CIA for
conspiracy in killing JFK, Mort parked his career, and went to work as an unpaid investigator for Jim Garrison. He made a decision for America, and he paid dearly for it.
You might want to read, in Google, by typing "Sahl" "Argo", an interview he gave in 1968. There is much more to Mort Sahl than your frivolous assessment of the man. At his 80th Birthday bash, Jay Leno, Jonathan Winters, Harry Shearer, Bill Maher, Woody Allen, and many others paid tribute to Mort, and praised not only his wit, but his steadfastness and his example. I think you should be lucky enough to
talk to Mort,about whom Woody Allen said
"Mort throws off enough ideas in half an hour than most people do in a year." You are lucky to have Mort at your school. My name is Chuck Noyes, and I will be happy to converse with you if you email me at [email protected].
Mr. Johson,
I was reading some material on Mort Sahl and came across your articles in the Claremont Conservative, and I have to say, they angered me. I'm 52, and have followed Mr. Sahl's work since the 60s. He's not, as you claim, a liberal; in fact, he refers to himself as a radical. And he is, in the sense that he has criticized both Democratic and Republican Presidents, liberals and conservatives. Whether you like his humour or not, in fairness, one has to acknowledge that Mr. Sahl is an independent critic. That's what got him in trouble with ideologues on the left and the right.
As for your comments about the JFK assassination, they're absurd. The House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in 1978 that there was more than a 90% probability that there was more than person shooting at the President. Leaving that aside, a vast number of witnesses, government personnel and critics have disclosed information that clearly undermines the basic conclusions of the Warren Report. A lot of that information was presented during the 1978 hearings, which were broadcasst live by PBS. The forensic evidence available today proves in itself that at least two and possibly three or more gunmen were involved in the assassination. Only sloth prevents one from gaining access to this information.
I'm a Canadian lawyer, trainied in the U.S. at the University of Chicago and Columbia Law School, and have studied the Warren Report and the work of the critics for a number of years. You should be aware that the critics include people such as the late Alexander Bickel, Sterling Professor of Consitutional law at Yale, who was and still is considered to be one of the greatest constitutional scholars of the 20th century. Not all the critics are left-wing conspiracy nuts.
Regarding the Warren Commission itself, were you aware that assassination was a state crime in 1963 and only the Texas Attorney General, Waggoner Carr, had the jurisdiction to proceed with an inquiry into the murder? Why did LBJ prevent America's established legal process from taking its due course? Why instead did he appoint a political commission that had no legitimate fact-finding powers to gather evidence? One doesn't have to be a conspiracy theorist to raise troubling questions about the Warren Commission in relation to legal process, criminal procedure and the division of powers between the federal and state governments under the Constitution.
It's great that you're interested enough in the history of the post-war period to write about Mr. Sahl and his times. But I suggest you take a few history courses on the Kennedy era and also examine the body of Mr. Sahl's work before taking positions that simply defy basic facts, common sense observation and the historical record.
Yours truly,
Michael Alexander, JD
Toronto
Post a Comment