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h-l-mencken
The Zoo
By Editor on January 25, 2011
by H.L. Mencken (pictured) I OFTEN WONDER how much sound and nourishing food is fed to the animals in the zoological gardens of America every week, and try to figure out what the public gets in return for the cost thereof. The annual bill must surely run into millions; one is constantly hearing how much [...]
America, 2011: Liberty is Not Safe
By Editor on January 12, 2011
by Frank Miele (pictured) H.L. MENCKEN, a famous writer of the first half of the 20th century, is often credited with having said: “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” So far as I can tell, he never actually said that, which may just give more credit to the validity of [...]
H. L. Mencken at Full Throttle
By Editor on January 4, 2011
Honeyed and abrasive: the irrepressible journalism of the ‘Sage of Baltimore’ and American Mercury founder by Michael Dirda H.L. MENCKEN (1880–1956) is often smilingly referred to as the Sage of Baltimore (especially in Baltimore), but during the first third of the twentieth century he was the most outspoken, irrepressibly contrarian literary and political journalist in [...]
America Needs a New Ingersoll
By Editor on January 3, 2011
Robert Ingersoll (pictured) was a lantern of reason in a nation of fools by H.L. Mencken WHAT the country lacks is obviously an Ingersoll. It is, indeed, a wonder that the chautauquas have never spewed one forth. Certainly there must be many a jitney Demosthenes on those lonely circuits who tires mightily of the standard [...]
Baltimore Reading Series Honors American Mercury
By Ann Hendon on September 17, 2010
by Ann Hendon ACCORDING TO Reading Local, there’s a new literary reading series in Baltimore that honors the spirit of H.L. Mencken and The American Mercury. They say: The second installment of the New Mercury Reading Series was held at Jordan Faye Contemporary Gallery, featuring Charles Cohen, Steve Luxenberg, and Melissa Hale. Their mission statement [...]
Sterilizing Criminals
By Editor on September 12, 2010
Today is H.L. Mencken’s 130th birthday, and we commemorate it here with two important and seldom seen essays by the Master of the Pen himself. –Ed. by H.L. Mencken THE RECURRENT EFFORT to eliminate criminal stocks by sterilizing criminals is opposed violently by sentimentalists, and also by the pseudo-scientists who argue fatuously that character is [...]
Utopia by Sterilization
By Editor on September 12, 2010
by H.L. Mencken First published in The American Mercury, August 1937 DISCUSSING IN THE PLACE a few months ago the sorrows roweling the great Republic we live in, I ventured to throw out a double-headed suggestion. The first part of it was to the effect that an easy way to reduce those sorrows today, and [...]
Daytonians Full of Sickening Doubts About Publicity
By Editor on July 22, 2010
A Report on the Scopes Trial by H.L. Mencken Illustration: Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan (The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 9, 1925) ON THE EVE of the great contest Dayton is full of sickening surges and tremors of doubt. Five or six weeks ago, when the infidel Scopes was first laid by the heels, [...]
Homo Neanderthalensis
By Editor on July 21, 2010
A Report on the Scopes Trial by H.L. Mencken (pictured) (The Baltimore Evening Sun, June 29, 1925) I SUCH OBSCENITIES as the forthcoming trial of the Tennessee evolutionist, if they serve no other purpose, at least call attention dramatically to the fact that enlightenment, among mankind, is very narrowly dispersed. It is common to assume [...]
A New US Constitution
By Editor on May 17, 2010
A Constitution for the New Deal by H.L. Mencken The American Mercury, June 1937 THE PRINCIPLE cause of the uproar in Washington is a conflict between the swift-moving idealism of the New Deal and the unyielding hunkerousness of the Constitution of 1788. What is needed, obviously, is a wholly new Constitution, drawn up with enough [...]
US News »
America: Economic Disaster Looms
May 8, 2011
by Bob Chapman Publisher of The International Forecaster. AS THE ECONOMY STUMBLES the American standard of living recedes. Forty-four million people are using food stamps and in one year that figure will be 60 million. Washington and Wall Street say “what, me worry?” Of course not; they are the “masters of the universe.” We are [...]
Europe »
Italian Court Increases Sentences for 23 CIA Agents
January 4, 2011
AN ITALIAN COURT UPPED the sentences for 23 CIA agents convicted in absentia of abducting an Egyptian imam in one of the biggest cases against the US “extraordinary rendition” programme. The 23 CIA agents, originally sentenced in November 2009 to five to eight years in prison, had their sentences increased to seven to nine years [...]
Social Sciences »
The Happiness Hypothesis
May 8, 2011
Of Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis, and Historical Narratives by A. Helian JONATHAN HAIDT IS ONE OF THE MOST coherent thinkers in the social sciences today. A Professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, he specializes in the study of morality and emotion, and how they vary across cultures. He describes himself as an [...]
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Opinion, Vintage Mercury »
Genesis of the Southern Cracker
May 7, 2012
by W.J. Cash (pictured) FOR years it has been the fashion with historians to explain the white cracker of the South as simply the product of degenerate blood-strains from Europe — the progeny of the convict-servants and redemptioners of Old Virginia. But the theory defies logic and the known facts. Actually, the source of the [...]
Opinion, Vintage Mercury »
Genesis of the Southern Cracker
May 7, 2012
by W.J. Cash (pictured) FOR years it has been the fashion with historians to explain the white cracker of the South as simply the product of degenerate blood-strains from Europe — the progeny of the convict-servants and redemptioners of Old Virginia. But the theory defies logic and the known facts. Actually, the source of the [...]
Arts, Film, Literature »
Pauline Kael: One Against the Herd
May 6, 2012
Selected Writings of Pauline Kael; Library of America, 2011 Pauline Kael: Alone in the Dark; Brian Kellow, Viking Adult, 2011 by Ron Capshaw FOR CONSERVATIVES, PAULINE KAEL IS notorious for her much-quoted comment about her astonishment that Nixon won the 1972 election since “everyone I know voted for McGovern.” Despite this prime example of the liberal [...]
