Monday, November 01, 2021

Mort Sahl serves up some truth about Gloria Steinem

A girl named Gloria Steinem who professes to be a worker for George McGovern but, as I understand it, well, I'm getting ahead of myself. This girl said in NEW YORK MAGAZINE, I asked her on the air, what she read. She said, "Well I only read New York. I would no more read RAMPARTS," she said, "than TIME because it has a preconceived bias." And I said, "Do you think RAMPARTS is penetrated on the basis of the fact that they were the first to point out what the CIA was doing at universities?" She said, "Oh. by now, the CIA must be penetrated." And she went on to ridicule it and generally draw a framework of paranoia and madness about me -- successfully. After the program, driven by guilt, she sent me a wire of apology. But the nine million people that saw the program didn't see the wire. That girl attended The Vienna Peace Festival, the Leftist festival which is what -- '59 of something? [. . .] The CIA bought her plane ticket. And I don't know whether she is merely an informant or whether she thinks it's a lark -- which is even more dangerous -- or that it's all funny. But it isn't funny to the bodies floating out of Cambodia certainly, needless to say.

 

-- Mort Sahl speaking on KPFA in 1970 -- you can order a copy of that broadcast from THE PACIFICA ARCHIVES.