Mencken Memories:
Mr Torrez pointed me a few days ago to a collection of H.L. Mencken quotes. Known as the “Sage of Baltimore”, Henry Louis Mencken was a newspaper man there in the 1920s and 30s. Legend had it his intelligence was so admired that FDR used to call him from the White House for advice.
Mencken is something of a folk hero in my old hometown. Citizens are rallying to save his house after the City of Baltimore let it fall into disrepair. The local library houses his papers in their own special room. Once a year, on Mencken’s birthday, the open it up to the public. The faithful line up hours ahead of time just to poke through the old man’s stuff.
When I interned at the Baltimore Sun’s editorial desk, Mencken’s bully pulpit, in 1994, I used to ask the writers what they did when they got blocked. Most had a Mencken collection on their desk the same way a Catholic might have a little statue of St. Jude. I made a point of reading a little Mencken every Monday. It felt like putting on his hat.
Gems from the master:
No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
Freedom of press is limited to those who own one.
Nature abhors a moron.
Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution.
The cosmos is a gigantic flywheel making 10,000 revolutions per minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it.
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
The role of the press is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.