Mort Sahl Dead: Stand-Up Comedian Tackled Political Themes - Variety

Throughout his career, Sahl frequently provoked his audience. Everyone was fair game. He went after Joseph McCarthy and the blacklist, Eisenhower and even Kennedy, whom he admired. The politically skeptical comic once declared, “Democrats are the left wing of the Republican party. Do you want vanilla or French vanilla?” Another time he said: “Liberals feel unworthy of their possessions. Conservatives feel they deserve everything they’ve stolen.”

He was unyielding, even in old age. In 2011, the 84-year-old Sahl began his show at a Mill Valley, Calif., club before a pro-Obama crowd with the line, “No, he can’t.” He continued performing near his Mill Valley home

“If you were the last man on earth,” Sahl told an interviewer, “I’d have to oppose you. That’s my job.”

One of a kind original to the end. Here is his first recording. The manic energy is stunning.