Still Pungent After All These Years

“Now, where was I?”

Mort Sahl must have asked that a dozen times during his performance Sunday night at the Tiffany Theatre. But the answer never really made much difference. Wherever his wittily digressive tales took him--from the White House to Barbra Streisand’s house--the veteran comic set to gleefully illuminating political absurdities and deflating celebrity pretensions.

In “Mort Sahl’s America,” which opened Saturday for a three-week engagement, the influential stand-up continues to pull small, funny truths from the grand follies of powers that be. Clad in his trademark V-neck sweater, with rolled-up newspaper in hand and an undimmed twinkle in his eye, Sahl stood before a complete set of the Warren Report and announced that he was going to take the measure of the country by examining the state of politics, movies and women.

But even that minimal structure quickly dissolved as Sahl began to energetically and evenhandedly work over the American landscape with his gentle satire and reasoned cynicism.

“A liberal is someone who believes in busing but doesn’t like the idea of school prayer,” he explained at one point. “A conservative hates the idea of busing but believes in school prayer. I guess a moderate would be someone who just believes in having prayer on the bus.”

The 69-year-old Sahl pioneered the art of political stand-up comedy and, at the beginning of his career, functioned as a well-read gadfly--a highly intelligent Everyman whose sharp commentary sliced through the clumsy obfuscations of the establishment. Now Sahl speaks more as a bemused insider, spinning stories out of encounters with Robert Redford, Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin as if they were simply eccentric characters from his neighborhood.

Sahl’s material often takes the shape of tall tales rendered tellingly mundane. For him, a quick stroll across the Paramount lot leads to run-ins with Paul Newman, Warren Beatty and Norman Lear, all of whom become fodder for Sahl’s pokes at the excesses of ego-driven Hollywood liberalism. Conservatives get their due when Sahl recalls the right-wing response in Virginia when Senate candidate Oliver North stated unequivocally that he had lied before Congress: “At last, a politician who speaks the truth!”

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Sahl’s easygoing, conversational manner is thoroughly engaging, and no matter how nasty the subtext of his material, he holds forth happily like the ultimate cocktail party raconteur. (He suggests that L.A.’s gang problem would be eliminated if General Electric bought the Bloods, Rupert Murdoch bought the Crips, and both began some corporate downsizing.)

Given the coming elections, he doesn’t spend as much time as one might expect on the current rogues’ gallery in Washington, but he is successful in presenting a pointed view of American history in which authority figures have consistently bumbled, bungled and deceived. One of his funniest segments involved reading transcripts from a volume of the Warren Report in which Gerald Ford and Earl Warren seem less concerned with an assassination investigation and much more interested in the specifics of the dirty dancing done by strippers at Jack Ruby’s nightclub.

Sahl ended the evening by warmly thanking the audience for 42 years of support. “I’ve always treated the audience as if they had a PhD, and I’ve never been disappointed.”

But, before the moment became too sentimental, the twinkle was back in his eye. Flashing a brilliant smile, he shouted, “Is there any group I haven’t offended?” and headed off stage, no doubt in search of tomorrow’s newspaper.

* “Mort Sahl’s America,” Tiffany Theatre, 8532 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood; Wednesdays-Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 7 and 10 p.m., Sundays at 2 and 7 p.m. Ends Aug. 11. $25-$30. (310) 289-2999.