One quote that really struck me, both an example of Mencken's perspicacity but also his blindness. Hearing William Jennings Bryan at the Democratic National Convention in 1904, he wrote:
As Bryan began to speak, Mencken observed how a hush fell over the crowd, and how he was cheered and jeered in turn by the excited hall. “He knew that the swift way to get things done in this country was not to argue for an idea, but to arouse a hatred,” Mencken wrote later, “and that is exactly what he set out to do, dramatically and ruthlessly…. He knew, too, the subtle power of religious reminiscences and suggestions—its power to enchant and to arouse ancient and deep-lying passions, its power to sentimentalize even as dull a thing as a problem in political economy. In a word, he knew how to make the crowd run amuck…. The people were not brought in to decide a problem, but merely to slaughter a villain." With some heat, Mencken noted, "Such a mountebank as the Hon. William Jennings Bryan, with his astounding repertoire of bogus remedies, would be almost unimaginable in Germany."
Germanophile that he was, he failed to recognize what was to happen in Germany some thirty years later. His myopia in that regard, and refusal to admit to the appalling depredations against the Jews, was to lose him many friends during the years leading up to WW II. This myopia is only partly ameliorated by his defense of the black community, an unpopular stance. He was dismayed by the lynching of a man and incurred the enmity of the "eastern shore" residents for his editorials that cost the Sun a lot of advertising revenue. As late as the thirties, while in Germany, Mencken failed to appreciate the dangers faced by Jews in Germany as he considered Hitler a harmless buffoon. His naïveté was extreme and remarked upon by his friends who could see that Germany by this time was a schizophrenic mess of economic success and terror.
Mencken's support for unpopular causes was legendary. The suppression of free expression under Wilson during WWI was appalling. Anything and everything German or even suspected of being sympathetic to anything German was subject to arrest. One debt of gratitude we owe Mencken was his resistance to suppression of free thought which was rampant Palmer raids.
Mencken was heavily involved in the strategy for taking on Bryan during the Scopes trial. It was his idea to put Bryan on the stand, according to Rogers, although I was unable to confirm that anywhere else. Indeed, Mencken left to return to Baltimore before the famous climax of the trial. (On a side note, if you have not seen Inherit the Wind starring Spencer Tracey and Frederic March, go do that right now. The 1960 version, not the 1988 film with Kirk Douglas and Jason Robards. That one is junk.)
On the nomination of Warren Harding: The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
He thought Prohibition was abominable. While some viewed agitation against alcohol and tobacco a simple nuisance, Mencken believed such attitudes actually endangered individual liberty. “The Free Lance” bristled with indignation at the pretensions of a moral mania that was chipping away at man’s basic freedoms; his right to smoke a cigar, for example. A moralist could challenge him to a debate on smoking, he declared, even denounce him as a sinner, “but when, not content with this, he proceeds to snatch my cigar out of my mouth, or to belabor me with a club from behind, or to have a law passed condemning me to 30 days in jail, then he goes beyond my rights, and I am fully justified in calling him names, in pulling his whiskers and blacking his eyes. And whether I am justified or not, I am going to do it.”
Mencken could be quite Randian, years before she articulated the individualism he subscribed to: "He scorned the mob man or the believer, what he later called the “booboisie,” versus the first-rate man of the civilized minority—in other words, the iconoclast, whose mission it was to “attack error wherever he saw it and to proclaim truth wherever he found it. It is only by such iconoclasm and proselytizing that humanity can be helped.” Unfortunately, some of that thinking resulted in a favorable view of social Darwinism.
While I generally enjoyed the book, I found the numerous sections on his multiple girlfriends --it took him years to settle on Sara -- to be a bit tedious. I was not aware that he had done so much for the literary community, especially black writers, almost by himself bringing black writers to the attention of the country. His studies of the American language were epic and justifiably famous.
Wednesday, February 26, 2020
Review: Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg
Ellsberg certainly likes himself in this revealing memoir, although I didn't care for the way the audiobook shifted back and forth between a narrator and Ellsberg himself. That being said, it's clear that Ellsberg, however laudable his motives, revels in rationalization for his actions. I was surprised by the role Neil Sheehan (author of the excellent https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/417640.A_Bright_Shining_Lie) played in spiriting off with a complete set of the documents he swiped from the apartment where Ellsberg was hiding the copies. Sheehan delivered them to the Times where they spent weeks going over everything in preparation for their publication. Ellsberg found this out only during the depositions for his trial when the infamous Howard Hunt's safe was found to contain evidence showing what Sheehan had been up to.
Once the Times had hold of the documents and had begun publishing, the Nixon administration went to court to get an injunction against publishing, the first time the press had been subject to prior restraint according to Ellsberg. I seem to remember the case of Near v Minnesota in which the Supreme Court had ruled prior restraint unconstitutional, but perhaps the erroneous clarion call of "national security" made the difference. In any case the Supreme Court in New York Times v United States ruled they could publish. One result was an awakening of the somnolent newspaper industry which had been mostly regurgitating government handouts with regard to foreign policy. A longer term effect was the steady erosion of unquestioning support for not just the war, but government itself.
Bob Haldeman had predicted as much in a conversation with Nixon:
To the ordinary guy, all this is a bunch of gobbledygook. But out of the gobbledygook comes a very clear thing.... You can't trust the government; you can't believe what they say; and you can't rely on their judgment; and the – the implicit infallibility of presidents, which has been an accepted thing in America, is badly hurt by this, because It shows that people do things the president wants to do even though it's wrong, and the president can be wrong.
The recent publication by the Post of the Afghanistan Papers reveals a similar pattern of mendacity and prevarication on the part of the government and military; the "we have just turned the corner," syndrome.
By that time it was all really moot anyway, as Ellsberg had, with the help of many friends who helped hide him and his wife while the FBI was looking for him, distributed sets to more than a dozen other papers. In fact, for a while Ellsberg must have felt he was living in a spy novel. He was hidden by friends who communicated in codes and talked only on pay phones (I wonder how that would go today -- I suppose the equivalent would be burner phones.)
Among the secrets revealed was that the president and his men kept two sets of books. Often even the pilots were unaware they were bombing in areas they had been told were off limits like Laos and North Vietnam. It got so bad that a lowly sergeant reported to his senator that everyone was lying. He was assuming the president didn't know, but it was the president who was orchestrating the whole thing.
By this time Ellsberg had been arrested and charged. Ironically, the U.S. did not have an Official Secrets Act. In fact Congress had specifically excluded whistle-blowers when it was debating what to do about leakers, although neither Ellsberg nor his attorneys knew that at the time.
I have to admit that Ellsberg probably should have gotten a medal simply for the fortitude in standing over an early Xerox machine to make copies of 7,000 pages. That, in itself, was punishment.
Once the Times had hold of the documents and had begun publishing, the Nixon administration went to court to get an injunction against publishing, the first time the press had been subject to prior restraint according to Ellsberg. I seem to remember the case of Near v Minnesota in which the Supreme Court had ruled prior restraint unconstitutional, but perhaps the erroneous clarion call of "national security" made the difference. In any case the Supreme Court in New York Times v United States ruled they could publish. One result was an awakening of the somnolent newspaper industry which had been mostly regurgitating government handouts with regard to foreign policy. A longer term effect was the steady erosion of unquestioning support for not just the war, but government itself.
Bob Haldeman had predicted as much in a conversation with Nixon:
To the ordinary guy, all this is a bunch of gobbledygook. But out of the gobbledygook comes a very clear thing.... You can't trust the government; you can't believe what they say; and you can't rely on their judgment; and the – the implicit infallibility of presidents, which has been an accepted thing in America, is badly hurt by this, because It shows that people do things the president wants to do even though it's wrong, and the president can be wrong.
The recent publication by the Post of the Afghanistan Papers reveals a similar pattern of mendacity and prevarication on the part of the government and military; the "we have just turned the corner," syndrome.
By that time it was all really moot anyway, as Ellsberg had, with the help of many friends who helped hide him and his wife while the FBI was looking for him, distributed sets to more than a dozen other papers. In fact, for a while Ellsberg must have felt he was living in a spy novel. He was hidden by friends who communicated in codes and talked only on pay phones (I wonder how that would go today -- I suppose the equivalent would be burner phones.)
Among the secrets revealed was that the president and his men kept two sets of books. Often even the pilots were unaware they were bombing in areas they had been told were off limits like Laos and North Vietnam. It got so bad that a lowly sergeant reported to his senator that everyone was lying. He was assuming the president didn't know, but it was the president who was orchestrating the whole thing.
By this time Ellsberg had been arrested and charged. Ironically, the U.S. did not have an Official Secrets Act. In fact Congress had specifically excluded whistle-blowers when it was debating what to do about leakers, although neither Ellsberg nor his attorneys knew that at the time.
I have to admit that Ellsberg probably should have gotten a medal simply for the fortitude in standing over an early Xerox machine to make copies of 7,000 pages. That, in itself, was punishment.
Sunday, February 23, 2020
Review: Trials of the Monkey: An Accidental Memoir by Matthew Chapman
Matthew Chapman is the great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin. He's also a screenwriter and director of some note — at least to his lights. He's also an avowed atheist who decided to investigate the site of the famous "monkey trial," the infamous battle between religion and science in Dayton, Tennessee immortalized in the wonderful film Inherit the Wind. The book becomes a combination historical narrative/ memoir/personal voyage. He explains his interest in the Scopes trial this way: After a bus driver explains he belongs to the Pentecostal Church, where people speak in tongues and "fall over backwards" — 'It's amazin,' I ain't never seen one git hurt' — using that as incontrovertible evidence of the existence of God, Chapman is compelled to observe that "It requires so little proof on the one hand and so much on the other. People will inform you that Jesus was born of an angel-impregnated virgin and walked on water 'because it's in the Bible,' but think nothing of telling you with a sniff of contempt that evolution is 'just a theory, ain't no proof.' The inherent unfairness of this double standard is one of the things that attracts me to the Scopes Trial."
There are books about the Scopes trial that provide much more detail of how George Rappleyea, a Dayton resident, wanted to take advantage of the controversy surrounding passage of the Tennessee law that forbade the teaching of evolution, by hosting a trial in Dayton, a town that had suffered a severe economic downturn after a local mine closed. Inherit the Wind provides a good feel for the climate (pun intended) of the trial and community, but simplifies tremendously. The defense and prosecution each had four to five lawyers and one of the famous speeches for the defense was actually given by Dudley Malone rather than by Charles Darrow, one of my heroes — but those are minor quibbles.
Chapman, an open-minded, good-humored fellow, recounts his delinquent childhood and his musings about life in general as he visits with the Bryan College professor who teaches "proof" of creation and with a local minister, attending his church. He confronts his preconceptions of the South, his "neurotic city-dweller" northernness — fearing the banjo-toting violent, redneck with the gun rack in the truck. What he finds most disturbing, however is the pervasive religiosity. "I feel adrift. It makes me uneasy. What I find disturbing is not so much the belief in God, but the habit of credulity which it engenders. If they can believe in God --who never shows his face — simply because it makes them feel good, what else might they be persuaded to believe in? What's the difference between religious evangelism and political propaganda? Might one prepare you for the other? Was it not credulity as much as 'evil' which made the attempted extermination of the Jews possible?
Chapman goes on a field trip with some of the Bryan College geology students to visit a cave that their professor explains has evidence of the creationist theory of creation. On the way back in the van, he engages in a discussion with the students about hell, and they reveal a certainty that those who do not accept Jesus as their personal savior will be consigned to an everlasting hell. "I'm not saying these kids are Nazis — I like them, in fact — but . . . believing in a literal hell, a burning lake, an inferno of unimaginable suffering, they accept with equanimity that seven-eighths of the world, including me, will end up in it. Forever. . . "Either they don't really believe this or in fact there is something Nazi-like about them: their Final Solution is one of extraordinary scope and brutality; a holocaust of souls which makes the Führer's merely physical extermination of the Jews seem positively amateur. 'Our Father' is far more ambitious: he's going for the eternal destruction of not just Jews, but Hindus, Homos, Muslims, Buddhists, Catholics, atheists, agnostics, and presumably Scientologists and others on the lunatic fringe. Seven-eighths of the people He creates, He then destroys. The only place you get worse odds is the abattoir. The girl I'm looking at as I'm thinking this is an accounting major. How on earth can she become an accountant? Then what? A mother? Little League? A nice home? One of those vans with a sliding door down the side? Knowing what she knows, how can she even contemplate this? How could you enjoy the comforts of a suburban life knowing that your God is going to flambé just about everyone you meet? But there she sits, as optimistic and contented as any teenager I ever met."
There are books about the Scopes trial that provide much more detail of how George Rappleyea, a Dayton resident, wanted to take advantage of the controversy surrounding passage of the Tennessee law that forbade the teaching of evolution, by hosting a trial in Dayton, a town that had suffered a severe economic downturn after a local mine closed. Inherit the Wind provides a good feel for the climate (pun intended) of the trial and community, but simplifies tremendously. The defense and prosecution each had four to five lawyers and one of the famous speeches for the defense was actually given by Dudley Malone rather than by Charles Darrow, one of my heroes — but those are minor quibbles.
Chapman, an open-minded, good-humored fellow, recounts his delinquent childhood and his musings about life in general as he visits with the Bryan College professor who teaches "proof" of creation and with a local minister, attending his church. He confronts his preconceptions of the South, his "neurotic city-dweller" northernness — fearing the banjo-toting violent, redneck with the gun rack in the truck. What he finds most disturbing, however is the pervasive religiosity. "I feel adrift. It makes me uneasy. What I find disturbing is not so much the belief in God, but the habit of credulity which it engenders. If they can believe in God --who never shows his face — simply because it makes them feel good, what else might they be persuaded to believe in? What's the difference between religious evangelism and political propaganda? Might one prepare you for the other? Was it not credulity as much as 'evil' which made the attempted extermination of the Jews possible?
Chapman goes on a field trip with some of the Bryan College geology students to visit a cave that their professor explains has evidence of the creationist theory of creation. On the way back in the van, he engages in a discussion with the students about hell, and they reveal a certainty that those who do not accept Jesus as their personal savior will be consigned to an everlasting hell. "I'm not saying these kids are Nazis — I like them, in fact — but . . . believing in a literal hell, a burning lake, an inferno of unimaginable suffering, they accept with equanimity that seven-eighths of the world, including me, will end up in it. Forever. . . "Either they don't really believe this or in fact there is something Nazi-like about them: their Final Solution is one of extraordinary scope and brutality; a holocaust of souls which makes the Führer's merely physical extermination of the Jews seem positively amateur. 'Our Father' is far more ambitious: he's going for the eternal destruction of not just Jews, but Hindus, Homos, Muslims, Buddhists, Catholics, atheists, agnostics, and presumably Scientologists and others on the lunatic fringe. Seven-eighths of the people He creates, He then destroys. The only place you get worse odds is the abattoir. The girl I'm looking at as I'm thinking this is an accounting major. How on earth can she become an accountant? Then what? A mother? Little League? A nice home? One of those vans with a sliding door down the side? Knowing what she knows, how can she even contemplate this? How could you enjoy the comforts of a suburban life knowing that your God is going to flambé just about everyone you meet? But there she sits, as optimistic and contented as any teenager I ever met."
Wednesday, February 12, 2020
Review: The Scopes Monkey Trial (Images of America: Tennessee) by Randy Moore
I've always been fascinated by the Scopes "Monkey" trial, especially after watching the brilliant performances of Spencer Tracy, Gene Kelly, and Frederic March in the classic Inherit the Wind (1960). (The 1988 film starring Kirk Douglas and Jason Robards is God awful and should be destroyed.) As we've been reading Marion Rogers biography of Mencken for my reading club, I thought I'd review some of the more salient features of the trial. This is a terrific book for that with supporting photographs.
I was not aware that Mencken had already left Dayton before the climactic interrogation of Bryan by Darrow. I knew it was hot, but did not know that that famous event was also outside the courtroom on a platform under the shade of the trees. The courtroom itself, was the largest in Tennessee, and pictures taken during the trial reveal just how large the crowd was. Scopes himself went on the study geology and worked in South America for an oil company. Ironically, the jury was barely in attendance during the trial, having been sent out repeatedly while the lawyers wrangled over procedural issues. The fine itself was never collected and the Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of evolution, remained on the books until 1967 when it was successfully challenged. It was followed in 1968 by Epperson v Arkansas when the Supreme Court unanimously invalidated an Arkansas law of similar ilk.
Bryan was a tragic figure. An immensely popular populist he was nominated to run for president on the Democratic ticket three times ,and had he not associated himself with the anti-science movement would have gone down in history as far less of a buffoon. Darrow himself had supported Bryan in his quest for the presidency. Dayton ruined what was left of their former friendship and Bryan died six day later following his usual gluttonous repast. (He was diabetic.)
In his defense, much of Bryan's antipathy toward evolutionary theory was its misuse by natural selection advocates who then made the leap to eugenics. The textbook that was being used in the school was filled with racist statements and its portrayal of evolution (there are pictures of the page in question in this book) was worse than simplistic. "The author, George William Hunter, not only asserted the biological difference of races, he insisted on the vital importance of what he called “the science of being well born”—eugenics. Like most progressives of the time, Hunter believed in “the improvement of man” via scientific methods. That meant promoting personal hygiene, proper diet, and reproductive control. A Civic Biology also has suggestions for what to do with “bad-gened” people, in a section called “The Remedy.”
A prophetic paragraph from Bryan's never delivered speech: Science is a magnificent material force, but it is not a teacher of morals. It can perfect machinery, but it adds no moral restraints to protect society from the misuse of the machine. It can also build gigantic intellectual ships, but it constructs no moral rudders for the control of storm-tossed human vessels. It not only fails to supply the spiritual element needed, but some of its unproven hypotheses rob the slip of its compass and thus endanger its cargo. (https://newrepublic.com/article/128144/dark-history-liberal-reform.)
If you are looking for a compact review of the events and characters of the trial, this one is perfect.
I was not aware that Mencken had already left Dayton before the climactic interrogation of Bryan by Darrow. I knew it was hot, but did not know that that famous event was also outside the courtroom on a platform under the shade of the trees. The courtroom itself, was the largest in Tennessee, and pictures taken during the trial reveal just how large the crowd was. Scopes himself went on the study geology and worked in South America for an oil company. Ironically, the jury was barely in attendance during the trial, having been sent out repeatedly while the lawyers wrangled over procedural issues. The fine itself was never collected and the Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of evolution, remained on the books until 1967 when it was successfully challenged. It was followed in 1968 by Epperson v Arkansas when the Supreme Court unanimously invalidated an Arkansas law of similar ilk.
Bryan was a tragic figure. An immensely popular populist he was nominated to run for president on the Democratic ticket three times ,and had he not associated himself with the anti-science movement would have gone down in history as far less of a buffoon. Darrow himself had supported Bryan in his quest for the presidency. Dayton ruined what was left of their former friendship and Bryan died six day later following his usual gluttonous repast. (He was diabetic.)
In his defense, much of Bryan's antipathy toward evolutionary theory was its misuse by natural selection advocates who then made the leap to eugenics. The textbook that was being used in the school was filled with racist statements and its portrayal of evolution (there are pictures of the page in question in this book) was worse than simplistic. "The author, George William Hunter, not only asserted the biological difference of races, he insisted on the vital importance of what he called “the science of being well born”—eugenics. Like most progressives of the time, Hunter believed in “the improvement of man” via scientific methods. That meant promoting personal hygiene, proper diet, and reproductive control. A Civic Biology also has suggestions for what to do with “bad-gened” people, in a section called “The Remedy.”
A prophetic paragraph from Bryan's never delivered speech: Science is a magnificent material force, but it is not a teacher of morals. It can perfect machinery, but it adds no moral restraints to protect society from the misuse of the machine. It can also build gigantic intellectual ships, but it constructs no moral rudders for the control of storm-tossed human vessels. It not only fails to supply the spiritual element needed, but some of its unproven hypotheses rob the slip of its compass and thus endanger its cargo. (https://newrepublic.com/article/128144/dark-history-liberal-reform.)
If you are looking for a compact review of the events and characters of the trial, this one is perfect.
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