Hacker News Reader

Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

>This article leaves out the fact that the 'Sage of Baltimore' was also a miserable racist and anti-semite

Which is neither here, nor there. Half of the population or more was at the time (and for far later). Was he exceptionally more of those things? I don't think so, he just expressed some of those things in public works.

So it's like mentioning that Julius Cesar wasn't against keeping slaves, or that Washington didn't think women should vote.

View on HN

On the contrary, if you're going to hold someone up as a sage of the time, compare them to other sages. And you can take someone like John Dewey, who was very well known in the early 20th century, or Randolph Borne as examples of people who were quite perceptive, as sages, and point that they were in fact openly explicitly anti racist. Quite a few of the socialist, social democratic and communist writers of the period had a public record of deep thorough social and political criticism that rivaled menckens sans racism. The "judge them by the standards of their time" can only work so close to our own time, or if you exclude those voices that counter your narrative.

Edited: Its also I think worth pointing out when someone who is held up a paragon of democracy, like Washington is, held views that were quite anti-democratic. If this persons vision of democracy was limited, should we not note this? Regardless (within reason) of the time? There were people publicly writing at the time of the American revolution that believed in an end to slavery, the right of woman and non-property holders to vote, etc. There was a reason that The Federalist Papers were written, it was assumed that the arguments for the adoption of the constitution and the government it would create were liable to lose out for a variety of reasons. We tend to collapse the range of debate that was happening at that time.

>On the contrary, if you're going to hold someone up as a sage of the time, compare them to other sages.

Well, pointing the fact they followed the general racist etc feeling might be informational, but the sage part refers to the many issues he wrote about where he was indeed very prescient and competent -- not some total omniscient figure that couldn't go wrong.

>Quite a few of the socialist, social democratic and communist writers of the period had a public record of deep thorough social and political criticism that rivaled menckens sans racism.

Yes, but few were as popular and influential while doing so. This was a major newsperson, most of the others were fringe voices. Plus their anti-racism went hand in hand with the political ideology that they had adopted -- whereas for Mencken it was not so.

Appeal To Reason was a socialist publication that reached half a million house holds in 1910. Not exactly "fringe". Neither was the New Republic, which published both Dewey and Bourne. Dewey was fairly widely published in other publications as well, he influenced many at the same time that Mencken did.

I'm not sure but I'd imagine that Menckens racism very much did go hand in hand with his ideology, perhaps not in a causal way but complementary. As another commenter noted he was very much a misanthrope

Who is holding Mencken up as a paragon of virtue? He's famous as an erudite misanthrope and curmudgeon. I expect he hated practically everything and everyone. Perhaps that is why he's fun to read?

I find this to be a poor and lazy defense in general, but even more so given the elitism and condecension Mencken had for the "half or more" of the population. People have to squint and misappropriate for other figures like Nietzsche, but not so for Mencken. There is a reason for that...I say this as someone who has works of both on their bookshelf.

Also it should be noted that some of the most damning material was found in his private journals describing people/organizations that he interacted with personally.

Well, what is the reason for that? Why not say what it is? Thanks.

Appealing to the values of an ignorant majority is quite an ironic position to take when defending Mencken.

More pragmatically, he was a misanthrope, which, whatever its other charms, rarely serves one well in seeing past ingrained bigotry and bias.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com