Mencken Still Controversial

Please cancel my subscription. When I read the Nov./Dec. issue in which you held up H.L. Mencken as someone worth reading, that did it for me. Your magazine is no longer what it once was and is not welcome into my home anymore.

Joan
Abingdon, Maryland

Nice Mencken article [Unvarnished Truth: The Incomparable H.L. Mencken, Nov./Dec. 2008 issue] He’s long been one of my writing heroes. Even once toured one of his houses in Baltimore. Unfortunately, few of today’s newspapers would have the backbone to give a column to a writer like Mencken…if they could find one.

Papers today either (a) avoid controversy in the mistaken belief that their readers don’t like to be upset, or (b) invent controversy where there is none purely to prop up their publisher’s sociopolitical economic agenda. Even so, what made Mencken great was that while he was not afraid to be controversial, he had the verbal skills to do his jousting with aplomb and style that lesser commentators simply could not muster. Were he alive today, he would be a fun and insightful blogger to read.