Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

The stand-up comedian Mort Sahl has died. Most of the tributes didn't mention the fact that he was a speechwriter for John F. Kennedy. He was hired specifically to write jokes for Kennedy, and they became friends; good friends. And after the assassination, Mort publicly denounced the Warren Commission and that got him blacklisted- for years. 

As I said, most of the reports didn't say a word about any of that, but the Los Angeles Times did.  

"Sahl, whose on- and off-stage preoccupation with a conspiracy theory on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy slowed his career in the late 1960s, died Tuesday."

Notice that it doesn't say a word about him having known Kennedy and worked for Kennedy. And the only reason his career slowed is because he was blacklisted. It was a political persecution, not a grass roots rejection.

This is from Variety:

"After Kennedy’s assassination, Sahl began reading from the Warren Report onstage; he was soon labeled a conspiracy kook, and he didn’t have much of a standup career from 1966 to 1976 except for appearances on college campuses. Sahl said he was blacklisted from TV. In the late 1960s, Sahl worked, without compensation, for New Orleans District Attorney and Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorist Jim Garrison."

How they love that term conspiracy theorist, don't they? 

You can't overstate Mort Sahl's courage and heroism. He was a friend of John F. Kennedy, but John F. Kennedy had a lot of friends. At least, he thought he did. But how many of them stood up for him after he was murdered by the National Security State? Very few. Practically none. Not one member of his large family was willing to fight for him; not even his brothers. But, Mort was loyal to him to the end. And he paid the price; he willingly paid the price.