Everybody knows by now that Mencken used to write all sorts of anti-semitic things in a series ~ A SERIES ~ of secret diaries.
Only a "Postie" would overlook that ~ place is just awash in anti-semitism, anti-Cristianity, anti-freedom ~ anti ~ you name it.
Going down hill fast.
Mencken was brilliant. He gouged everybody and he did it hilariously.
He severely criticized our government for not allowing Jews who were fleeing for their lives from Europe to take refuge here.
He would have loved Palin because he truly loved women in an intellectual and endearing way. Read In Defense of Women by H. L. Mencken
“The notion that Mencken was an anti-Semite gained notoriety in 1990, with the publication of his diary. That book included a couple of brief passages that could be interpreted as anti-Semitic. The editor declared Mencken an anti-Semite, and the publisher made rather a big deal of it, presumably in hopes of increasing the book’s sales at the expense of the author’s reputation.
“Against the notion that Mencken was anti-Semitic stood the evidence of his entire life: most of his closest friends were Jews, he expressed sympathy for Jewish settlement in Palestine, he advocated that the United States accept German Jewish refugees from Hitler’s pogrom. There was also the testimony of the people who knew him.”
Mencken also despised journalists, who he saw as ink-stained wretches. He was a serious cynic, and attacked scoundrels wherever he found them, and he found them a lot. Were he alive today, he would roundly curse The Washington Post as a gutter rag.
If for no other reason, he should be honored today as one of the very few who had the guts, and the respect, to be *allowed* to criticize both presidents Roosevelt, men who in their time had silenced many critics.