Edginess is next to godliness...until edginess becomes boring that is. Such was the case with political humorist, Mort Sahl, who recently passed away last month. Though Sahl enjoyed landmark success in his life, revolutionizing comedy, hobnobbing with the Kennedy's and eventually becoming the highest paid comedian in the business, he eventually fell into obscurity. Of course fans of Mort Sahl, mostly comedians and people like me who used to watch Sahl's old stuff with my older parents, will mostly argue that this is because people these days are too politically correct or not intelligent enough to understand Sahl. His comedy, they would argue, is simply too cutting edge for a world that has been dumbed-down by cancel culture obsessed liberal downers, also like myself, which is strange seeing as I am one of the only people under forty on the planet today who even knew who Mort Sahl was before modern comedians paid tribute to him after his death. It is also strange because today Mort Sahl's style of comedy has made quite the comeback, albeit without him this time around. Comedians like Dave Chapelle, Chris Rock, and Kevin Heart all follow Mort Sahl's basic formula: infusing outlandish and often downright rude critique of their political opponents into humor in order to get a few laughs. It is even more interesting that, much like Dave Chapelle, Mort Sahl fell out of favor of the political elite of his time after going a bit too far with some of his jokes. Sahl mocked the Kennedy administration and many of Kennedy's fans never went back for seconds. This also caused Sahl to go off the rails a bit; after the Kennedy murder, he began reading odd excerpts from the Warren Report on stage, and even did a bit of conspiracy theorizing about the events during his "comedy routine". This was not well received and Mort Sahl became unfunny for the first time in his life. Once again, oddly like Dave Chapelle, Mort Sahl made a triumphant return to comedy during the Nixon administration, and was very well liked by the democratic establishment once more. Dave Chapelle, of course solidified his return to comedy during the Trump years, promoting free speech above politeness, and an all out assault on people who are kind to the LGBTQIA folks. But Mort Sahl's triumphant return was short lived, as will be Dave Chapelle's of course. The thing about comedians like Sahl and Chapelle is that they are simply too political to keep the audience laughing in the long term; attributing the audience's lack of interest in political discourse to political correctness, which most people cannot even define, misses the point entirely. People watch comedy to relax, not to think about deep issues like whether there was a conspiracy involved in the Kennedy killing or whether or not free speech trumps trans rights. Trust me on this one, I went to school for this and I have performed for over twenty years. If there is one thing most people do not come to a comedy show for, it is odd conspiratorial rants about the "establishment". Lenny Bruce, another comedian who I would venture to say that most people my age have never heard of, followed this exact same trajectory. Bruce go off on saying shocking, political things so much during his routines that he would read excerpts from his court hearings on stage in an almost histrionic fashion. Bruce was very clearly trying to alter political viewpoints on stage; making people laugh became secondary for him. After awhile, people stopped biting and Bruce, like Sahl, died in obscurity. What I am trying to say here is that, though you may like politics onstage, most people do not. Comedy is about bringing people who are different together, but politics only reminds us of how different we are. I do not wish this on comedians; they do it to themselves. They try to control the thoughts of their audience by shaming them into aquiesence and, eventually they always fail. When an audience laughs to stop the pain, comedy dies.