THE SCOURGE:

A skeptic worth remembering (Bill Murchison, December 31, 2002, Townhall)

Mencken's influence depended less on his ideas -- as comfortably as they cohabited with the zeitgeist -- than on the most forcefully exuberant prose style ever concocted. You could love his ideas; you could hate them. Either way, he was a great (hence too-often-imitated) writer.

Here he is on Calvin Coolidge: "We suffer most, not when the White House is a peaceful dormitory, but when it is a jitney Mars Hill, with a tin-pot Paul bawling from the roof. Counting out Harding as a cipher only, Dr. Coolidge was preceded by one World Saver and followed by two more. What enlightened American, having to choose between any of them and another Coolidge, would hesitate for an instant?"

No batteries are needed to keep 70-year-old passages like this one alight. Words -- rightly chosen, skillfully arranged -- provide their own, perpetually renewable charge. Mencken wrote an estimated 5 million words. The product remains warm, collectively, to the touch.

I have been teaching Mencken (along with William Allen White, John Graves, James Jackson Kilpatrick, etc.) in my college writing class. So that my students might go forth and bust the Rotarians? Well -- no. So that they might come to understand better the connection between forceful thought and forceful expression, the way passion builds rhythm and shapes sentences that make you want to get up and march. Or anyway, pump your fist in the air.

Modern corporate journalism -- I beg leave to generalize Menckenesquely -- distrusts ideas. The one idea it trusts devoutly is that of profit, coupled with the ideal of customer retention. No intellectual bloodlettings, please! Someone might take offense. Oh, boo hoo.

Still, today's journalism would be much worse without the Mencken legacy, a legacy of engagement, fueled by that passion which alone produces writing worth reading. Pick up a copy of "The Skeptic" if you doubt me. Better yet, pick up something -- anything -- by Mencken.

It is one of the great defects of democracy that the more we need a Mencken--to tell us what a bunch of boos we are--the more forcefully such ideas are driven from the "marketplace". No network or major publication today would be willing to risk the wrath of the consumer by creating a regular spot for a skeptic to bash our ludicrous tastes, ideas, and concerns. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 4, 2003 10:28 AM