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Comment by gruseom | Hacker News Reader

My radar went off on this one, because I've heard it attributed to both Mencken and P.T. Barnum. But it turns out Mencken did say it - or rather, he said something that resembled it:

No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby. (Chicago Tribune, Sept. 19, 1926)

This is another case of a quote that mutated over the years into a pithier, more rhythmic form. An interesting divergence is that Mencken never explicitly said the American public.

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Mencken being the elitist he was, probably never saw the "great masses" in finer detail. American or otherwise, to him they were nothing but a bulk; a gray, disgusting pile of intellectual and material poverty.

Him and Buckley have elevated crypto-fascist snobbery to a new level.

I'm not sure you're right about Mencken. I have the impression that he was more of a cynic than an elitist, not a groveler before wealth and power. There's a series of interviews with him on YouTube, done by a protégé of his as a kind of oral history. I dabbled with listening to them a few months ago and remember one anecdote. Mencken described how he enjoyed walking through neighborhoods of Baltimore at night, looking into well-lit living rooms to learn what he could about how people lived. For the most part he thought people's taste was appalling, but he mentioned that one poor black woman's house had struck him as being arranged with some of the best taste he had ever seen. I don't know that much about Mencken but my guess is that "good taste" was high praise.

About Buckley, on the other hand, I agree with you. I've watched some of the interviews he did in his prime and seen nothing but an oily, pretentious jerk, sure that his establishment platitudes are convincing arguments. Those pieces really have not aged well. I'm thinking of the ones where he "debates" Chomsky ("I'd smash you in the goddamn face") and, infamously, Gore Vidal ("Now listen you queer, stop calling me a crypto Nazi or I’ll sock you in the goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered.") Some intellectual hero.

I hope you're right about Mencken. Maybe its his German sensibilities that I am reading too much into; I can understand why someone with an enlightened continental leaning might find American then, and still now, barbaric.

And thanks for reminding me of Buckley's youtube disasters. I now have enough material to entertain a crowd this Australia day BBQ :-)

So, what should you do if someone keeps calling you a crypto-nazi in a televised debate? I'm pretty sure that if Buckley and Vidal had been having a debate about civil rights, and Buckley repeatedly called Vidal a "crypto-faggot", under the pretense that doing so was vaguely related to civil rights, and then if Vidal had made a rejoinder similar to the one quoted, you'd be applauding it.

Remember, it was Vidal's essay about Buckley that twice inspired libel suits and forced Esquire to print an apology.

(Note: Not a Republican and not a fan of Buckley, but a fan of the truth.)

Surely you're not saying that being labeled a Nazi and being called gay should evoke a similar, combative response?

Being called "faggot" is not the same as being accused of homosexuality.

That's the (disparaging) meaning I grew up learning. What else does it mean?

To the best of my understanding, the difference between "homosexual" and "faggot" is about the difference between "African-American" and "nigger".

Objectively, the meaning is the same; but you wouldn't use the first to insult someone, and you wouldn't use the second in a policy document.

Which, unless I'm somehow confused here, brings me back to my original point. If someone calls you a Nazi, they are calling you something horrible. But if someone calls you a homosexual, even if they do it in an insulting manner, they aren't saying anything horrible about you at all. They are just showing their own ignorance and bigotry through their choice of words.

So that's why I objected to indirect comparison of calling someone a Nazi vs. calling someone a homosexual.

"crypto-faggot" is not "crypto-homosexual"

So you choose two points out of a public figure's entire career to paint him with? Buckley spent the rest of his life regretting losing his temper against Gore Vidal and I don't know of any other incident where he had a similar outburst.

Against Chomsky, he was clearly making a joke, and you can see Chomsky and the audience both laugh if you just watch it.

I have watched it. It was clearly a joke, but equally clearly not completely a joke. I didn't like it at all. The truth, though, is that I haven't done the kind of research I would want to do to properly argue about this, and it's possible my judgment is off base. (Apart from which, this wouldn't be the right place. I held off replying for a day because I seem to have triggered the wrong kind of discussion.)

Yes. I picked up on a bit of uncomfortable subtext there as well, but didn't know what to make of it. It certainly wasn't an outburst like the Gore Vidal incident, however.

But there is very little point discussing the character of a dead man, regardless of the forum.

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