I wasn't alive at the time, but Mencken seems like he was the Michael Moore/Bill Maher/John Stewart of his era...
IOW, a complete leftist jerk.
IOW, a complete leftist jerk.
It's perhaps providential that I made it to this thread to read your post, since I don't like football, but any thread where someone comes out against H. L. Mencken is worth reading.
Unfortunately, Mencken (though an atheist, evolutionist, and anti-Southern bigot) was not a liberal. He was a bit of a "palaeoconservative" and as a matter of fact is practically worshipped by many "palaeos" to this day. However, this may have more to do with his association with The American Mercury, a magazine he founded in 1924 which became anti-Semitic in the Fifties (under Russell Maguire) and avowedly national socialist in the Sixties (under the aegis of Willis Carto). But that doesn't change the fact that he promoted conservatives like George Schuyler.
In an odd but totally stereotypical bit of hypocrisy, Mencken ("palaeo" icon) actually championed American Blacks and was a big supporter of the NAACP (I guess he was careful to exempt Southern Blacks from his charges of stupidity, like many liberals do today). But many conservatives continue to forgive Mencken's support of the liberal NAACP.
Perhaps the ultimate secret behind Mencken's heoric status to "palaeos" is that we now know from his personal writings that he was an anti-Semite--perfectly appropriate considering his hatred of and hostility toward the Bible.
I'll never understand why any "conservative" would admire this piece of trash.
Complete leftist jerk?
Nope. Just the greatest cynic ever born.
Consider "global warming" and mull this quote from Mencken, way back when:
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
He was more of an equal opportunity critic. Alistair Cooke (who was a great lefty) had an unintentionally humorous foreword to a collection of Mencken writings where he praised Mencken for his witty, insightful critiques of the Coolidge and Hoover administrations -- which tragically were followed by a stream of mean-spirited, off-base criticisms of FDR.