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LOS ANGELES — More than 40 years after stand-up satirist Mort Sahl packed in Berkeley undergrads and hip San Franciscans at the hungry i nightclub, his jaundiced eye still surveys the foibles of his countrymen.

"Watching the movie "Independence Day," you get an idea of where we are when the aliens blow up the White House and the audience cheers," he observes, sipping a cafe latte at the Glen Deli in Los Angeles' Bel Air section.

"We now have a generation that hasn't fought anything but acne."

At age 69, Sahl's hair is turning gray, but his bright blue eyes still appraise the audience, even if it's only a single reporter, and his rolling laughter still punctuates his sallies.

Next he turns to the state of the Jews and how they are portrayed on stage and screen, bearing down hard on the "please don't hit me" attitude conveyed by a Woody Allen or Elaine May.

"Look at Neil Simon's plays, there are Jews there I've never met," Sahl warms to his subject.

"It's amazing how we retreat artistically to cartoon-like figures, the overbearing Jewish mother, the Jewish American Princess. How about the Jewish Prince? How about all these guys named Jeff in Italian suits who run the Hollywood studios?"

But some things about Sahl have changed. The quips still roll off, challenging the listener's mental acuity. Yet occasionally a strained note creeps in.

Take his classic observation on three generations of sexual politics. "In the '50s, you had to be a Jew to get a girl. In the '60s, you had to be black to get a girl. In the '70s, you had to be a girl to get a girl."

Asked to update the quip, Sahl responds that in the materialistic '80s, you had to be rich to make out, and in the '90s, you have to possess power, someone like super-agent Michael Ovitz, to get the girl.

The answer hardly matches the zing of the original.

Politically, Sahl has always been an equal opportunity insulter. "Is there anyone here I haven't offended?" he used to ask his audiences.

But judging by a 75-minute interview, Sahl now weighs in most sharply against the liberals, who were his most faithful acolytes in the olden days.

On Clinton voters, he says: "They go along with their big brother who didn't inhale, and downplay their father who hurt his arm in the service."

There is more zip in a radio talk show by right-wing Watergate felon G. Gordon Liddy than in today's liberals, he observes.

"Liberals used to be vital, they fought for unions and the end of the Vietnam War. Then they went into things like gender bias, and got castrated, in effect."

Asked about conservatives, he responds, "We all know they are Neanderthals, who always fear that we'll take away what they have."

Do some liberals feel that he has defected to the enemy?

"They left me," Sahl responds. "We've gone from Camelot to Dogpatch. Do you think that Adlai Stevenson [one of his all-time idols] would recognize a Mondale or a Dukakis?"

As for Hollywood, Sahl, an occasional screenwriter and actor, goes Bob Dole's criticism one better.

"What we get in the movies now are guns, drugs, violence and ersatz machismo…There was more moral resolution in an old John Wayne movie than in all current movies put together."

Furthermore, "they take the profits from the trash and in the evening have a cocktail party for the United Negro College Fund."

Lying just beneath the surface of Sahl's barrage lies deep personal pain. His only child, a 19-year old son, died in March under circumstances that are still under investigation. He and his Chinese-American wife were divorced five years ago.

Has Sahl mellowed with the years and through his recent experiences?

"I guess as a last resort I had to become human, rather than being the Mosaic judge on the mountains," he muses.

"My wife touched my heart and my son opened my heart…I've learned that intelligence is a meager defense against your emotional pain."

Sahl lives by himself now, "but sees a couple of different people."

He brightens when the conversation turns to Los Angeles, where the Montreal-born entertainer has lived, off and on, since he was eight years old.

Sahl likes L.A., heartily dislikes New York, and is appearing in his "Mort Sahl's America" show at the Tiffany Theatre in West Hollywood. He explains his affection for Tinseltown in his own style.

"L.A. is like a girl you meet at a dance, you get a rush of passion and go to bed with her. The next day you see her at another party and she says, `nice to meet you,' she doesn't even acknowledge you. Every day you got to renew your acquaintance…it drives me crazy."

Twenty years from now, he adds, "California will have gated communities and people in the gutter. Goodbye, middle class."