This week, instead of focusing on either the latest casualities in Iraq (or his elective majesty’s request for $87 billion more for our current imperial adventure), the imbecilities of the gubenatorial race, or even a disquisition into the sheer greatness of Bill Murray, I’ve chosen to spotlight my personal hero on what would have been his 123rd birthday. The man in question is the patron saint of journalists, H.L. Mencken.
Born in Baltimore, “Ball-more” as pronounced by its residents, on September 12th, 1880 Mencken’s life spanned the era of the party dominated newspapers to the final season of “I Love Lucy”. Of good German stock he was born to continue his father’s trade as a cigar manufacturer, an upbringing that lead him to a life long love of the cash crop of the Carribean. It was only his father’s early death, as well as an ambition to be something above a bourgeois tradesman, that propelled him into the very career he was born for.
The rest, as the cliche goes, is history. Mencken went from cub reporter to managing editor before he was 30. It was not in the field of strict reporting, however, that Mencken truly became an icon. His flamboyant style and bitter hatred of so-called social reformers led him into the world of full time editorial writing, first at the Baltimore Sun, and later as an editor of the “Smart Set” and the “American Mercury”.
The details of his life, though varied and interesting, read more like an essay and I won’t bore any of you with them. I will say, however, that there is an entire shelf of books of his in the Middleton library on the 4th floor (for those of you of the Freshman persuasion, that would be the ugly building with all of the books).
What truly made Mencken special was the fact that he used his words as weapons. Like a calvaryman, he rode through the lines of fundamentalists, prohibitionists, do-gooders, and other assorted reprobates, slashing with a joyous abandon.
In one of his most famous pieces, a withering barrage marking the death of three time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan (a distant relation of mine), he manages to cokpare Bryan to a rabid dog, a fly catcher, and a moron in about the space of two paragraphs.
One positively shudders, in my case with joy, to think of what he would have to write about the current occupant of the highest paid man in public housing; most likely it would involve a chimp screeching and flinging dung.
So, why am I wasting your time with this seeming vanity project? Because, first and foremost, I regard Mencken as the greatest columnist who ever put pen to page. Two, I think that if more people had his healthy skepticism about everything from religion to medicine we’d all live in a happier, saner society. Third and last, we’d see that our enemies, people who really do seem to hate us for our freedom, haven’t really changed over time.
Those who brought about Prohibition, the Palmer raids, and the fear and loathing of German-Americans are still here in the people who lock up their fellow citizens for smoking the wrong plant, created the Sovietesque PATRIOT act, and the hatred of Arabs and everyone else who shares the Moslem faith.
With men like Mencken gone it is up to us of this generation to produce our own skeptics, critics, and crusaders against the twin evils of egalitarianism and ignorance. Though there is little we can do in a democracy, as the votes of the intelligent are overwhelmed by those of every oxygen breathing biped, and a few non-breathing ones in New Orleans, we can still attempt to presere some remnants of our old high culture; blaring our Brahms against 50 Cent.
So, let us raise a glass, light a cigar, and praise a man who held few illusions, and never bowed to bull. If that could be said of any of us, we will have lived well indeed. Still, let us give a dead man his wish, and quote his final wish, “If, after I depart this veil, and someone wishes to please my ghost, wink at a homely girl and forgive some sinner.”