Liberal Tries to Appropriate Mencken

The Opinion ^ | June 25, 2002 | Len Hart

[tiddlywink]

Read the whole article here: http://www.theopinion.com/engine/article.asp?id=1311

Oh, and by the way, the author hangs out there, and you can comment about it on a bulletin board.

Some choice excerpts:

"H.L.Mencken was a conservative. But he was no bigot--and for that reason he would be vilified today as a 'liberal.'

Translation: To be conservative is to be a bigot.

"'Liberal' once meant 'free' but that predates Joseph McCarthy, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, and the current occupant of the Oval Office who have attacked our language as surely as they have attacked and distorted the very notion of freedom."

Translation: It had nothing to do with the statist policies of those who call themselves "liberal"

"In his day, Mencken towered above his peers; today, the some four to six conservative conglomerates who control the mass media wouldn't hire him."

Translation: Dan Rather and Peter Jennings are conservatives!

"Admittedly, "liberalism," of late, may in some cases be identified with a certain "intellectual snobbery"--but given the educational level of those in opposition--who can blame them? It has become increasingly difficult to explain a historical context, a conceptual nuance, a logical subtlety to a right-wing ignoramus these days without slipping into a forgivable condescension."

Translation: Conservatives are uneducated.

"In other words, I am wasting my time trying to reason with the morons of the right-wing."

Translation: No, wait, they're not just uneducated, they're mentally deficient.

[muawiyah]

Mencken kept private diaries. When they were discovered awhile back it was revealed that he was a closet anti-semite!

Guess that means Liberals are anti-semites. But we already knew that.

[Morgan's Raider]

OK, can the author of this debacle say "projection"?

Did you read the "commentaries" on the article? They have the mutual admiration society of Moe, Larry, Curly, Larry, Darrell and Darrell with a Sheila Jackson-Lee clone added for comic relief engaged in a first-class circle jerk stroking the hell out of each others' 'superior' intellect and egos. You sure this web address isn't a direct link to DU?

[keithtoo]

I Freeped this dweeb, but in all honesty, paying too much attention to these private message boards gives those parents-basement-living-low-lifes a little too much of the attention that they obviously are craving.

[gcruse]

 
Translation: No, wait, they're not just uneducated, they're mentally deficient.

Does the fact that you found it necessary to add your
translations of the article indicate that you think
Freepers are too uneducated and mentally
deficient to read something and make up
their own minds?  Think about it.

[Twodees]

Agreed. If young conservatives read only one book during summer vacation it should be that one of Sowell's. There's nothing quite like being armed with the observations of a true genius before reconfronting the vapid hordes at school again in the fall.

[x]

This is a pretty trashy and trivial article. Most of what most people write about conservatives -- or liberals -- isn't of much value to anyone than themselves. What they're doing is just talking about people they don't like. The problem with such talk can be seen in how Mencken's contempt for the "average American" becomes a liberal principle. If Hart were thinking seriously, and not just thrashing about in search of ammunition, the connection between liberalism and cynicism might trouble him.

Mencken has come full circle. The young liberals and radicals of the Twenties idolized him. When Mencken applied the same ironic denunciation to FDR as to Coolidge, Harding and Hoover, the more earnest liberals of the 1930s reviled him. Conservatives and libertarians picked Mencken up again in the 1970s. Now it's a liberals turn to argue that Mencken was really a liberal. But it doesn't wash. Mencken was a cynic, an antinomian, an ironist, a Nietzschean, and more than half a nihilist. Of course Mencken would sock it to conservative, religious, political and business leaders, but he was even more scathing with liberal or radical "idealists" and "crusaders." His denunciations of Puritans apply equally to the Ralph Naders and Hillary Clintons as to the Fallwells or Robertsons.

Mencken knew language. He wielded it like a saber or a rapier, but not like a "surgical laser," unless Dr. Evil was working it. Striking the deepest blow and drawing blood were more important to Mencken than precision or accuracy or fairness.

[Twodees]

Wow.Doesn't it become a burden to know simply EFT? Sure, x. Ol' Henry would cut his own throat for the sheer joy of cutting. Any reasonable human being on earth would just have to agree with your asessment.

Malarkey.

[ijcr]

Well analysed,Mencken would be rolling on the ground laughing at all these in depth studies of his writing.

America was Mencken's circus, a constant source of entertainment and amusement.In Mencken's world all politicians were clowns. He reveled in their self righteous absurdity and scorned all that sought to impose their will on others.

Antinomian is a harsh sentence on Mencken,after all he was an avowed atheist.Mencken had few absolute articles of faith, the most important one of them was this: When politicians start talking morality, grab your wallet and your children, and run for your life.If history repeats its self then Mencken's description of Bryan could equally apply to Clinton.
"What animated him from end to end of his grotesque career was simply ambition - the ambition of a common man to get his hand upon the collar of his superiors, or, failing that, to get his thumb into their eyes. He was born with a roaring voice, and it had the trick of inflaming half-wits. His whole career was devoted to raising those half-wits against their betters, that he himself might shine."

[muleboy]

Of course Mencken would sock it to conservative, religious, political and business leaders, but he was even more scathing with liberal or radical "idealists" and "crusaders." His denunciations of Puritans apply equally to the Ralph Naders and Hillary Clintons as to the Fallwells or Robertsons. Mencken knew language. He wielded it like a saber or a rapier, but not like a "surgical laser," unless Dr. Evil was working it. Striking the deepest blow and drawing blood were more important to Mencken than precision or accuracy or fairness.

I consider Mencken's insight of the nature of man rivalled only by Twain, Vidal, and Hunter Thompson. All of whom wrote well of man's inherent inadequacies when the subject turned to "virtue" and "power".

You say that HLM's denunciations apply equally across the ideological spectrum and then claim that his attacks were motivated more by malice than by reason. Do you have a specific critique in mind when you say that HLM was imprecise, inaccurate, and unfair?

[x]

You say that HLM's denunciations apply equally across the ideological spectrum and then claim that his attacks were motivated more by malice than by reason. Do you have a specific critique in mind when you say that HLM was imprecise, inaccurate, and unfair?

Surely there was more to Christianity than Mencken was willing to credit. If there had been as little in it as Mencken allowed would it have lasted two millennia?

I thought his article on Lincoln at Gettysburg didn't address the real issues of the speech, but oversimplified. But let's take the other point of view: surely there was more to the evangelical, "Jeffersonian" South than Mencken allowed in his writing on the Scopes trial. Mencken's picture of it was very scathing.

I guess it depends on what you are looking for. You won't find the balanced "on the one hand ..., on the other hand ..." in Mencken. He presents you with only one side of the story, which you can accept or reject as you choose.

On the other hand, there was a certain sympathy or complicity that entered into his obituaries on those like Bryan, Harding or Coolidge that he had savaged when alive. And that is to his credit.

The question that you raise is an excellent one. I think Mencken was more interested in expressing his own views and writing with zest than in power or coercion, hating or punishing. Therefore, he was capable of being truly scathing in some articles written in the heat of the moment, and of being more understanding and forgiving at other times. But reading some of the individual articles or those of Mencken's imitators one doesn't see this depth.

I do have to admit that Mencken was capable of fairness and accuracy, but much of what's remembered from his work is the savage satire that doesn't concede anything to the other side. Take the article that we are commenting on as an example of what's survived of Mencken.

[muleboy]

Many thanks for the comprehensive reply.

There is a "malady" that I suffer, which I believe I inherited from Mencken, and is quite common among present day politicos. That when writing opinion, to attack with an equal extremism to that of the original assertion. The more widely held the myth, (Christianity, Lincoln, FDR, etc.) the more virulently Mencken wielded the pen. After all he was but one man against millions.

Now if only I had inherited his talent?