Existing comment:
H.L. Mencken's typewriter:
In 1925, Henry L. Mencken wrote, "So far as I can make out, I believe in only one thing: liberty." Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956), nationally known for nearly half a century as "The Sage of Baltimore," used his wit and gift for language to skewer American politics and society in his essays, books and newspaper columns for the Baltimore Sun. The modern American's "booboisie's" corruption of the ideal of liberty stood high among Mencken's favorite targets.
In 1921, he wrote: "All we got to say on this proposition is this: first, me and you is as good as anybody else, and maybe a damn sight better; second, nobody ain't got no right to take away none of our rights; third, every man has got a right to live, to come and go as he pleases, and to have a good time whichever way he likes, so long as he don't interfere with nobody else."
Mencken's outspoken tirades against U.S. intervention in both world wars cost him his job -- twice. Although he made grossly anti-Semitic and racist comments, he also, surprisingly, was a fierce advocate for civil rights. Mencken's last column for the Sun, in 1948, decried the enforced segregation of the tennis courts at Baltimore's Druid Hill Park. |