“Liberty is not for these slaves; I do not advocate inflicting it against their conscience. On the contrary, I am strongly in favor of letting them crawl and grovel all they please before whatever fraud or combination of frauds they choose to venerate…Our whole practical government is grounded in mob psychology and the Boobus Americanus will follow any command that promises to make him safer.”
— H.L. Mencken
If we’re talking pure skill as a writer, I am taking “The Sage of Baltimore,” Henry Louis Mencken on my team.
Things haven’t changed that much—if at all—with the American public since the days of Mencken.
I don’t agree with everything Mencken wrote, but I agree with how he wrote it.
He lived in a different world. The son of a cigar-maker, born in 1880, Mencken was nearly 100 years before my time. His Baltimore was, “placid, secure, uneventful and happy.”
If you’ve watched The Wire or We Own This City from HBO, you’d be right there with me in vouching that the last one-and-a-half centuries have not been kind to Mencken’s telling of Baltimore’s reputation.
Mencken was a newspaperman from a very young age. Never went to college, but was more educated in “real life” than the good majority of “college boys.”
In 1924, he co-founded The American Mercury, which was soon a national phenomenon. Mencken called it, “a serious review, the gaudiest and damnedest ever seen in the Republic.”
He resigned as editor in 1933 due to philosophical differences with the publisher.
I am no Mencken. The guy was a force of nature. Even after he had a stroke, the guy still created content at an inhuman pace. The output was extraordinary.
I’m just a guy who likes to go fishing and watch baseball games. My life ain’t that complicated.
I have no philosophical differences with my publisher…for I am he.
But I have only seen one or two “serious reviews” in my time. The corporate press is pretty much a joke these days.
For the last twenty or so years, I have wondered what it would have been like to have a “review” like Mencken could have done it…in the 21st century.
I stopped wondering, took my own advice—“ready, fire, aim”—and started one.
The O’Leary Review.
It is going to launch in July. I’m publishing it myself. And it’s going to be great.
If you want a taste, you can get a sample of the first issue…
Get on it. Tell your friends about it.
This is going to be a serious review, the gaudiest and damnedest ever seen in the 21st century of the Republic.
Lots of Baltimore flavor in it, too…
Brian O’Leary