Talk:H. L. Mencken/Archive 3

This is an archive of past discussions about H. L. Mencken. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Introduction

Citation #3 about Mecken's diary is simply a link to an article from the LA times. It does not support the language in the introduction, that Mencken was a support of Nazi social Darwinism. Likewise, it contains no clear indication that Mencken had written racism/anti-Semitic commentary in his diary.

The citation itself seems to be an opinion piece, and that in and of itself should be not used as evidence for these claims. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cb5988 (talk • contribs) 05:06, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

.....

Latest update (third paragraph) to the introduction is a very diplomatic and technically skilled way of articulating a sensitive subject in its historical context. One can learn from this. I whole-heartily thank the author behind ip address 108.6.208.32 for taking the time to make the edits.

ie New Change=>His diary indicates that he privately used coarse language and slurs to describe various ethnic and racial groups, a practice which was not uncommon for his era. ie from Old discarded =>His diary indicates that he harbored strong racist and antisemitic attitudes, and was sympathetic to the Social Darwinism practiced by the Nazis. SteamWiki (talk) 14:48, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

(UPDATE)Seems to be an edit war over the inclusion of the above chunk. While I think it is diplomatically worded, I have not decided if it belongs in the intro since the "secret diary" which it is derived from could have been created for any number of reasons, private thoughts or even a literary exercise. It is one thing to think something and another to act on it. In any case these writings do not appear to bleed significantly into his activities or overall projected public image. The LA Times article referenced states Mencken regularly published black writers in American Mercury and persuaded his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, to publish their books. The last article he wrote for the Evening Sun in 1948 attacked segregation laws in Baltimore. For this reason alone, if we wish to include the chunk, I'm, leaning towards somewhere else in the article. SteamWiki (talk) 17:52, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

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Uplifter?

>He commented widely on the social scene...temperance and uplifters.

Anyone know what an 'uplifter' is? Can't find it in the three dictionaries I have tried.
Guffydrawers (talk) 06:54, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

A moral crusader. Nicmart (talk) 18:25, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

Mencken bios

How about including a select list of bios about Mencken? Nicmart (talk) 18:27, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

Need for a section on Mencken's Determinism?

Considering that there is a fashion among some libertarians and classical liberals to revere Mencken, in spite of his bizarre blindness to the threat from Germany in both World Wars, it might be worth writing a section on Mencken philosophical Determinism - as Mencken no more believed in human free will (personhood) than he believed in God, it is very odd for libertarians or classical liberals to revere him. Unless they want to make a radical distinction between philosophical and political libertarianism - but if philosophical libertarianism human personhood (free will) does not exist (as Mencken maintained) then political libertarianism is an absurdity, as who would care about the "freedom" of flesh robots whose every action was predetermined?2A02:C7D:B417:4800:5143:5513:B666:1B1D (talk) 20:15, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

Why are libertarians obliged to only admire persons who share their beliefs or philosophical underpinnings entirely? I would contend that Mencken’s writings belied his claim to disbelieve that free will exists. Nicmart (talk) 18:35, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

"Downright moron" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Downright moron. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 August 14#Downright moron until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Hog Farm _Bacon 15:15, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

"Although this characterization has been disputed..."

RedGrinch modified some text in this edit, removing language such as "although this characterization has been disputed". Pelirojopajaro reverted the edit. I think RedGrinch's changes deserve some discussion, because the source for the content that he removed is merely a letter to the editor by one of Mencken's personal friends, which is not an independent or reliable source. Schazjmd (talk) 14:17, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

I will make my case. Mencken's own words demolish his sole defender's apology. This apology consists of a single source that cannot reasonably be cited. And to top it off, the source doesn't even dispute that he was racist; it acknowledges and defends his racism. The entire "dispute" is fictional and should be removed.

First, a structural issue in the text. The introduction that Pelirojopajaro wishes to retain insists that Mencken's beliefs were merely "paternalistic" in keeping with "attitudes of his era". This is already an inexplicable, unjustified interpolation. Why are we suddenly doing comparative history? In the first section, no less? One questions why an encyclopedia would bring up a subject's views in that subject's introduction, only to then explain that these views are ambiguous, highly disputed, and not worth bringing up. If a historical figure's views are typical and unremarkable, why then have we remarked upon them?

With this dubious structural perversion established, encyclopedic standards and the very truth itself is free to distort. A reader is compelled to accept that his attitude is fatherly - merely the sweet, innocent kind of bigotry! Aww, how cute! (This kind of softening language has no place in neutral writing.) Then the reader scrolls down the page and is confronted with Mencken himself using a very different tone: "the educated Negro is a failure [...] because he is a Negro, [...] and he will remain inert and inefficient until fifty generations of him have lived in civilization. And even then, the superior white race will be fifty generations ahead of him".

To whom is that paternal? Is that how your father speaks to you, with a total conviction that you will be just as worthless at the end of your life as the beginning, and likewise your descendents? If so, how pitiable! This isn't paternalism - this is a segregation of the world into superior and inferior races, wherein the speaker, Mencken, is comfortably the superior. To excuse this is to scrub a dead man's soiled trousers.

In fact the "paternalism" phrase is directly lifted (sans quotation marks) from the letter defending Mencken, which quotes none of his opinions on "the inert, inefficient Negro" because the description of "paternalism" is blatantly incompatible with such. It's a spurious flattery that dissolves the instant you put it up against the man it purports to defend.

Mencken openly and shamelessly called for genocide in his private and public life. So who is this "disputing" his characterization as a racist? A single party with no credentials: a 1990 letter written by one "William Manchester", Florida resident, no occupation provided. A friend of Mencken's. And most insolently of all, the letter doesn't even try to argue that he was not racist. It freely admits he was racist. In the letter, we see him repeatedly admit Mencken's racism, then downplay it as product of his time:

Now the diary of his later years (review, Dec. 24) is being published - he had expressly prohibited publication, but the lawyers found a way to thwart his instruction - and in it one finds several slurs that are taboo, even shocking, today. But they were not written today. They were set down, in private, at a time when racial epithets and jokes were commonly heard in polite society.

When you catch a child doing something wrong, their first argument in defense of their innocence is "but everyone else was doing it!" Unfortunately for cookie-thieves, that's not innocence. It's an admission of guilt. Adlai Stevenson, crows Manchester and the editor exploiting him, displayed a similar anti-Semitism! Who cares? This isn't Adlai Stevenson's page.

Once Mencken even referred in the diary to "two dreadful kikes." My father was a social worker who crusaded for birth control and fought housing discrimination against Jews. Yet I once heard him describe an objectionable Jew as a "kike."

Some guy's dad also said kike, once, therefore it's impossible to say whether Mencken was an anti-Semite.

We are quoting this in the introductory paragraph and presenting it as a serious voice and plausibly conclusive argument that he was not racist, when the entire thrust of the letter-writer's argument is that he was racist, just not in a way the writer cares about. That's the "dispute". There isn't even a second citation.

Towards Mencken's anti-Semitism, observe Mencken himself:

"The Jews could be put down very plausibly as the most unpleasant race ever heard of. As commonly encountered, they lack many of the qualities that mark the civilized man: courage, dignity, incorruptibility, ease, confidence. They have vanity without pride, voluptuousness without taste, and learning without wisdom. Their fortitude, such as it is, is wasted upon puerile objects, and their charity is mainly a form of display." (Mencken's published work, Treatise of the Gods)

"The case against the Jews is long and damning; it would justify ten thousand times as many pogroms as now go on in the world." (Mencken's introduction to an edition of The Antichrist)

So Mencken despised Jews and wished them dead. What's the dispute? I think it's unfair to ignore his own words in favor of a friend's.

This is all assuming that Mr. Manchester's letter meets the standards of citability. It does not. He admits that Mencken is his good buddy. All his anecdotes are worthless. There's no need for me to pick it apart; it could inarguably be removed entirely.

Let me be blunt. Mr. Manchester and those like him hope to dodge responsibility. Being permanently "smeared" as a bigot after repeatedly calling for "pogroms" for the "inferior races" is just part of being an adult and living with consequences. While Mencken was not as successfully harmful as more effective racists, even saying many admirably non-racist things, this only makes the violent racism he happily expressed all the more confounding and obscene.

I only suggest that we call things what they are. If one casually wishes races dead in their personal time, it merits a mention of wanting races dead. Mencken did so repeatedly, publicly, and with ferocity. He was loud when it served him, and went quiet when it was impolitic. If you occupy yourself as a picker of trash, don't complain when history consigns you to the dustbin.

Finally, as for his military opinions, I question why they're in the introduction at all:

He seemed to show a genuine enthusiasm for militarism but never in its American form. "War is a good thing," he once wrote, "because it is honest, it admits the central fact of human nature.... A nation too long at peace becomes a sort of gigantic old maid."

Mencken has quotes indicating various pro- and anti-war views throughout his life, depending on the context. His "genuine enthusiasm for militarism" (as opposed to feigned enthusiasm?) was never an important part of his identity. Mencken is not a war writer. He never served, and his "enthusiasm" for war is rarely if ever cited or considered by anyone. So why are we quoting him on war in his introduction? I submit we remove that quote entirely or send it to Wikiquote. RedGrinch (talk) 23:43, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

That's nice. The only thing I agree with you about is that his views on race and war don't belong in the lede. His supposed racism is not what he is well known for. When searching for your first quote I found this article by Larry S. Gibson. If you want to work on improving the "Race and elitism" section, that would make sense to me as a starting point.Pelirojopajaro (talk) 08:04, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Aside from all the other issues RedGrinch has raised, Pelirojopajaro, don't you agree that a letter to the editor by a good friend of Mencken's is not a reliable source for the "characterization is disputed" content? Schazjmd (talk) 13:50, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

It's not an ideal source, but it's only being used for an uncontroversial claim that someone's racism is contested. You could use the Gibson article instead. Pelirojopajaro (talk) 07:13, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

A letter to the editor is WP:SPS; it's an unreliable source. I've replaced it with the Gibson article and changed the language to match the source. . Schazjmd (talk) 13:39, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't see letters to the editors mentioned on the SPS page or WP:BLPSPS. It was published by the NYT. The fact that it's primary seems like the actual problem. Pelirojopajaro (talk) 08:21, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

But anyway, your edit looks good to me. Pelirojopajaro (talk) 08:24, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Bibliography

The posthumous collections should include "The Vintage Mencken" collected by Alistair Cooke. I have a 1990 paperback by Yintage Books but there is a reference to Alfred A. Knopf hardback originally published in 1955.

Regards, George Summers (georgejsummers@gmail.com) 82.22.94.222 (talk) 09:58, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

The Mencken Society

Contact information for this 300-member society should be provided in your Mencken entry. It issues monthly newsletters on Mencken-related news. Its URL is Mencken.org.

The Mencken Society PO Box 16218 Baltimore, MD 21210-0218 (215)-292-0792

http://www.mencken.org/wordpress/contact-us/ RogerKni (talk) 14:01, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

See WP:NOTDIRECTORY RegentsPark (comment) 16:53, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Pro-Jewish Article by H.L. Mencken

This article would balance the "anti" extract in your entry. It’s rather long, but considering how damaging his "anti" comments have been to his reputation, perhaps it can be squeezed in.

“I have seen … Jews where they are theoretically at the bottom of the wheel, in the towns of Lithuania …where, for all their poverty, there was yet something proud, heroic, noble, almost majestic about them. There, in the midst of a malevolent and uncomprehending barbarism, they kept unflinchingly to their old faith, their archaic civilization, their brave dignity, their whole romantic Jewishness. I remember well how a doddering senior, his beard covering him to the middle, unlocked the door of the Wilna synagogue and showed me the treasures within. It was a place somehow august and silencing, a seat and temple of the oldest culture surviving in the world, a mighty fortress of immemorial mysteries. In the drab dignity of that ancient house, and in the aloof stateliness of the old man himself, there were a boast and a challenge; it was something to be a Jew, and his very bearing said it.”

H.L. Mencken, “A Sub-Potomac Phenomenon,” Smart Set, August 1918, p. 144. Reprinted as edited above in The Gist of Mencken: Quotations from America’s Critic, Ed. Mayo DuBasky, Scarecrow Press, 1990, pp. 506-07 RogerKni (talk) 15:21, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

This is a WP:PRIMARY source. You will need to find reliable secondary sources that discuss Mencken's attitudes.RegentsPark (comment) 16:55, 5 November 2023 (UTC)