Patterico's Pontifications

2/16/2007

HTML? Or H.L.? A Quiz

Filed under: Buffoons,Humor — Patterico @ 7:19 pm



As close watchers of the Sadly, No! web site are aware, blogger “Retardo Montalban” has re-branded himself as “HTML Mencken,” after the famous journalist H.L. Mencken. (Who was, by the way, a racist and anti-Semite, but leave that for another day.)

Does “HTML Mencken” live up to the memory of H.L. Mencken? Or is H.L. rotating in his grave like a demon-possessed washing machine on “super-spin cycle”?

Take this quiz, and decide for yourself. Who said the following?

1. “Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.”

a) H.L. Mencken
b) HTML Mencken

2. “So fuck that fucking pukeface Mark Fucking A. Fucking Kleiman.”

a) H.L. Mencken
b) HTML Mencken

3. “A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.”

a) H.L. Mencken
b) HTML Mencken

4. “GODDAMNIT!!! Fuckface fucktart cocksmoking chickenfucking FUCKETTY FUCKING SHITSICLE THIS PISSES ME OFF!!!”

a) H.L. Mencken
b) HTML Mencken

Answers below the fold.

Answers:

1. a) H.L. Mencken
2. b) HTML Mencken
3. a) H.L. Mencken
4. b) HTML Mencken

You may be HTML Mencken now . . . but you’ll always be “Retardo” to me.

52 Responses to “HTML? Or H.L.? A Quiz”

  1. Am I paranoid or is there a conspiracy by the left to make the Internet totally incredible and that way give the MSM back its monopoly in the influencing of public opinion?

    nk (77d95e)

  2. It’s not a conspiracy. It’s a pathology.

    Dan Collins (1e2e08)

  3. Thanks, Dan. I get it. They lie when on the MSN and they lie when on the Internet.

    nk (b57bfb)

  4. nk–
    The funny thing . . . sort of, because I’m mean . . . is that he changed his monicker because people weren’t taking him seriously.

    Dan Collins (1e2e08)

  5. “So fuck that fucking pukeface Mark Fucking A. Fucking Kleiman.”
    Wasn’t that Dorothy Parker at the Algonquin round table and not Mencken?

    andycanuck (044b0c)

  6. Well, it is better than being an anti-semite…

    David N. Scott (71b49c)

  7. Patterico:

    [Mencken] was, by the way, a racist and anti-Semite, but leave that for another day.

    I think that rather facile, Patterico. Mencken, like Rudyard Kipling, was far more complex and nuanced than is implied by calling him “a racist and anti-Semite.” Neither HLM nor RK is akin to Henry Ford (who published the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion in his newspaper as part of an anti-Jew crusade) or Charles Lindbergh (who was so taken with Adolf Hitler, that he nearly accepted Hitler’s invitation to move to Nazi Germany).

    This Wikipedia entry contains a decent summary, but there are a number of good biographies out there. I can ask Brad if he can recommend one, if you’re interested.

    Dafydd

    Dafydd (445647)

  8. Indeed, Mencken, whatever his faults had a lot to say. For instance this quote
    “The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.”

    Pretty much covers the global warming situation, I would say.

    fred (4d468e)

  9. (Who was, by the way, a racist and anti-Semite, but leave that for another day.)

    They were commonly held positions at his time (in the first three decades of the twentieth century); indeed, positions held across the political spectrum*. This was the context of his positions.

    *American communists were one of the exceptions. Indeed, without their efforts saving the “Scottsboro Boys” would have been a good deal harder. And no, I’m not a communist and I don’t think communism is a good idea or that Stalin led it astray. Still, credit where credit is due.

    Rostrum (39fc86)

  10. I think Patterico is within miles of perhaps achieving a “joke,” someday. I think that’s great.

    Thers (e1aee1)

  11. Rostrum:

    They were commonly held positions at his time (in the first three decades of the twentieth century); indeed, positions held across the political spectrum*. This was the context of his positions.

    But Mencken expressed them more vehemently and brutally than did others of his day.

    This is part of what I meant by saying he was more complex: The vehemence of his remarks was driven by the benign cruelty of all of his rhetoric, not specific animus against other races, other religions, or the other sex.

    Mencken was a universal cynic and misanthrope; but in fact he was quietly, almost secretly, a “godfather” to many blacks, Jews, and women. (Just as we found out, long after his death, that Mark Twain secretly and anonymously paid for a college education for more than a hundred young black men.)

    Mencken was more than anything else an individualist: he subscribed to Sturgeon’s Law long before Ted Sturgeon was even born:

    “90% of science fiction is crap; but then, 90% of everything is crap.”

    Mencken believed that the vast majority of the members of any group were useless lumps of protoplasm… but he also believed that every group — blacks, Jews, Communists, Fascists, Moslems, Catholics, Americans, Chinese — contained a core of truly unique and awe-inspiring individuals… and whenever he found one of those individuals, he dismissed all stereotypes lumping them in with the others of their group, and he treated them like equals.

    I said nuanced and complex, but I might even go so far as to use a word I almost never use (because I know what it actually means, unlike most who sling it around like hash at Ed’s Diner)… H.L. Mencken was a true iconoclast: he wanted to bring the entire world of settled ideas and comfortable blindness crashing down around our ankles.

    And he succeeded admirably in many ways. But an iconoclast in person can be a real bugger; he never does what he’s supposed to do, and he’s always saying things better left unsaid. (Like most of my own posts, I suppose, though I don’t think I rise to the exalted level of iconoclast.)

    Dafydd

    Dafydd (445647)

  12. Fred: Thanks for that quote; I needed a new one as my blog plug, and that was a great one!

    Dana (556f76)

  13. Mr ab Hugh: What must one do to rise to the level of iconoclast? Surely such is worthy of a learned essay!

    Dana (556f76)

  14. I have always thought iconoclasm an important component of libertarian liberalism. Edward Abbey comes to mind.

    nk (2e1372)

  15. Calling Mencken a racist and anti-semite is a gross oversimplification. Certainly he held racial groups and ‘The Jews’ in contempt, and subscribed – at least in print – to many unpleasant stereotypes.

    But it would be hard to find a racial, religious, or social group that he didn’t hold in contempt. He despised humanity in the mass, and did not feel that any of the subdivisions constituted an improvement. And he certainly didn’t believe in holding any people back because they belonged to one classification or another. He championed the rights of Blacks in insightful and pungent prose so often that he was regularly threatened with a lynching by the ‘pithicanthropoids” of the Deep South.

    If he derided Jews, he was as hard or harder on Christians, and harder yet on Atheists.

    He was a cheerful misanthrope. To limit him by implying that he only picked on one or two groups is close to being slander.

    C. S. P. Schofield (c1cf21)

  16. Dafydd,

    But Mencken expressed them more vehemently and brutally than did others of his day.

    Really?

    Here’s a quote from L. Frank Baum (you know, the guy who wrote _The Wizard Of Oz_):

    The nobility of the Redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them… The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civlization, are masters of the American continent and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihiliation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they should die than live like miserable wretches that they are. – quoted in Claudi Koonz, _The Nazi Conscience_

    Further, compare the writings of Mencken to that of Jack London – particularly works like “The Yellow Peril” or his commentary on Jack Johnson.

    Caveat: None of these authors was consistent in their comments on race, etc.

    Rostrum (39fc86)

  17. Yes, Mencken was more complex than being reduced to a line about being a racist and anti-semite, but I don’t think Patterico meant to imply that he was just that. I’m not one who thinks that just because a person holds a view or views that are bigoted towards a particular group or groups, that invalidates everything else they say or do.

    Mencken was one of the most brilliant and insightful commenters on the social scene and man’s foibles in general that we’ve ever had.

    CraigC (aa6a7c)

  18. Oh, and I meant to say that Retardo may be an asshole, but he does come up with some clever handles. I still laugh every time I see “Retardo Montalban.”

    CraigC (aa6a7c)

  19. If anyone is interested in a great/fairly recent biography about Mencken, I’d recommend “The Skeptic: A Life of H. L. Mencken” by the incomparable Terry Teachout of WSJ fame.

    Lesley (9cd016)

  20. Strange.

    I found their writing styles remarkably similar. And they clearly share the same superior intellect, urbane vocabulary, and gift for syntax.

    Professor Blather (c65bfa)

  21. Rostrum:

    But Mencken expressed them more vehemently and brutally than did others of his day.

    Really?

    Yes, really. You can always find a small handful of other people who have at times written brutal attacks on various groups. But the mass of men, racist as their attitudes were by our standards, did not express themselves as vituperatively as did these exceptional writers… occasionally, as with Baum, or consistently, as with Mencken.

    You can read hundreds of newspaper columns from the early 20th century, and you will find hardly a one that can rise to the level of (even-handed) literary blitzkrieg that Mencken reached six times before breakfast.

    Yet those nameless, faceless, flaccid racists, whose words puffed up the broadsheets of their day like the hot air filling the Wizards’s balloon, were truly, deeply, madly racists: they literally believed in the superiority of the white race qua race… which Mencken most assuredly did not.

    It’s a most ingenious paradox: the man with the most vivid and colorful denunciations of people of color (and people of Jewishness) was simultaneously much more willing than his “fellows” to treat individual blacks, Jews, and anythingelses as cardinal numbers, not mere ordinals within some vaguely defined group.

    Dafydd

    Dafydd (445647)

  22. Rostrum:

    Sachi points out the perfect counterexample: Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone With the Wind.

    Sachi notes that in her famous novel, you never get the sort of sweeping, Ragnarokian denunciations of blacks that you might find in a Mencken column… but on the other hand, Mitchell was far more of a real racist than Mencken.

    She was what Sachi calls a “compassionate racist”… you can’t expect too much from blacks, you see, because they’re such children. She thought that releasing these “helpless” blacks into the world as independent human beings was cruel. What can they do? They can’t fend for themselves… we have to take care of them, like favorite pets.

    This kind of benevolent dismissal is far more damning (and ultimately damaging) to the emergence of an independent and self-sustaining black culture in the late 19th century than any spectacular cannonade of uncredited calumny in the American Mercury.

    This is part of the distinction I’m drawing; Sachi touched it with a nail.

    Dafydd

    Dafydd (445647)

  23. This kind of benevolent dismissal is far more damning …

    The hard bigotry of no expectations.

    Abraxas (db3144)

  24. Dafydd,

    Let me tell you an interesting but relevant story. During the 1970’s, I attended Texas A&M University and was one of the Student Government Vice Presidents under the first Black President of the Student Government. (He was elected by the most conservative segments of the campus–the Corps of Cadets and the College of Agriculture by the way)

    Some of us wanted to suggest to the Texas Legislature that Prairie View A&M–the historically Black university in the A&M system be shut down and all of the students sent to Texas A&M.

    Our newly elected Black president of the Student Body opposed this. He opposed it because he said that the students at Prairie View A&M couldn’t make it at the University proper. They couldn’t make it because of the totally crap education they received at the hands of public education as located in the areas where most of them were educated.

    The relevance of this story to your post is that Margaret Mitchell understood something that you may not have understood. That is, that she believed that it is neither compassionate nor rational to expect that an unprepared–and, in fact, a forcibly held back, segment of society should be subjected to and forced out into an uncaring environment without help. Especially when the holding back part is instituted by government–like slavery, Jim Crow or totally crap public education.

    Jerri Lynn Ward (9f83e6)

  25. Jerri Lynn,

    I’m not offering this to be argumentative, but it strikes me that your comment supports the concept of Separate but Equal. Do you believe that’s a good policy in the long run?

    It seems to me that it would be hard for someone who has had an inferior education to succeed in a rigorous college, but at least they will have the chance to succeed. Perhaps they will have the strength of character and willingness to work that will help them succeed. However, closing the door because they might fail seems like the worst option to me.

    DRJ (605076)

  26. However, if your point is that students should be able to attend the college of their choice (provided they meet the admissions criteria), including segregated colleges, then I agree.

    DRJ (605076)

  27. I got one out of four. Hard quiz.

    –JRM

    JRM (355c21)

  28. Yes, really.

    I am afraid that you are simply wrong.

    You can read hundreds of newspaper columns from the early 20th century, and you will find hardly a one that can rise to the level of (even-handed) literary blitzkrieg that Mencken reached six times before breakfast.

    Having read dozens and dozens of newspaper columns from the first three decades of the twentieth century I beg to differ. When the issue of race arose (in the white press at least) blacks were not treated kindly. Racism was in fact a key component in the political movements of the time period, as the second incarnation of the KKK in the 1920s demonstrates.

    Rostrum (39fc86)

  29. Dafydd,

    Not that the KKK at the time focused exclusively on race. No, they had an agenda for the entire social order.

    …occasionally, as with Baum…

    How do you know that his comments on the matter were occassional? You a Baum scholar?

    …Gone With the Wind.

    The novel was written in the late 1930s.

    This kind of benevolent dismissal is far more damning (and ultimately damaging) to the emergence of an independent and self-sustaining black culture in the late 19th century than any spectacular cannonade of uncredited calumny in the American Mercury.

    I doubt it. What was damaging were the de jure institutions which attacked the ability of blacks to participate as full citizens, etc. What was also damaging was the racism of ordinary folks who blocked paths of achievement (whatever their motives).

    Rostrum (39fc86)

  30. Rostrum:

    Having read dozens and dozens of newspaper columns from the first three decades of the twentieth century I beg to differ. When the issue of race arose (in the white press at least) blacks were not treated kindly. Racism was in fact a key component in the political movements of the time period, as the second incarnation of the KKK in the 1920s demonstrates.

    Please read more attentively; this does not contradict anything I said.

    I said the racism of the ordinary writer does not rise to the fiery transcendence of Mencken, not that you don’t find racism. But the ordinary writer was actually a racist, actually believing the racist things he wrote… whereas Mencken verbally assailed blacks and Jews as part of a general plan to verbally assail and offend everybody.

    He did not, in fact, support the basic tenet of all racism: that one race is demonstrably superior to the rest.

    One problem with Mencken was that he was perfectly capable of rattling on for several pages, spewing lava in service of a point that he, himself did not believe. That makes it terribly easy to paint him as anything pejorative, but deucedly difficult to sort out what he really did believe.

    If anything.

    Dafydd

    Dafydd (445647)

  31. Dafydd,

    Please read more attentively; this does not contradict anything I said.

    Sure it does. Please read more attentatively.

    I said the racism of the ordinary writer does not rise to the fiery transcendence of Mencken…

    I beg to differ. Late 19th and early 20th century authors commonly played on the same sort of themes, etc. that Mencken did, and did so just as vehemently.

    But the ordinary writer was actually a racist, actually believing the racist things he wrote… whereas Mencken verbally assailed blacks and Jews as part of a general plan to verbally assail and offend everybody.

    That may or may not be; it has little to do with what I am discussing though.

    He did not, in fact, support the basic tenet of all racism: that one race is demonstrably superior to the rest.

    Again, it has little to do with what I am discussing.

    Rostrum (39fc86)

  32. Dafydd,

    Let me further suggest that the racist language of someone like Mitchell was the mere window dressing used to justify the system. Just as paternalistic language was used to justify slavery in the ante-bellum. Indeed, just like it was used by various Roman authors to justify the occupation of foreign locales.

    Rostrum (39fc86)

  33. To sum up:

    Vicious racist language was common in the early part of the 20th century. The language was used across the political spectrum and by numerous authors.

    Paternalistic racist language was common, but it didn’t describe the actual rationale (at least in any sort of totalistic sense) for the de jure and de facto discrimination so prominent in the early part of the 20th century.

    Rostrum (39fc86)

  34. Rostrum:

    Paternalistic racist language was common, but it didn’t describe the actual rationale (at least in any sort of totalistic sense) for the de jure and de facto discrimination so prominent in the early part of the 20th century.

    Um, okay. I stand on my previous comments.

    Dafydd

    Dafydd (445647)

  35. Patterico, who by the way is racist and anti-freedom, still isn’t sure if Kathryn Johnston’s death was justified.

    Frank N. Stein (bf276f)

  36. So you’ve got to let me know
    Should I feed the troll or no…

    Oh, “whadda” are you pulling out of your hat Frank N. Stein? Do you have any support for any of your three assertions?

    I imagine that Patterico is “anti-freedom” to murder, rape and steal. He has said so himself when he explained why he chose the career he did.

    The “racist” nonsense is a result of you not taking your medication.

    As for Kathryn Johnston, he has been presenting a thoughtful and restrained view of the case, looking at the facts as they become available and not jumping to conclusions on emotion and predisposition (as I exhibited on his first post on the shhoting).

    nk (d7a872)

  37. Refresh my memory… Who’s Kathryn again?

    Scott Jacobs (8b4109)

  38. Frank N. Stein? Lefties go out of their way for a punny handle the way the military will always go the extra mile for a cool acronym.

    [It’s no coincidence that the biggest flame-throwers are the gutless anony-cowards like “Frank N. Stein.” — P]

    Greg (80b923)

  39. Come on now people, it’s not like Patterico is dead and unable to defend himself against character slurs, as opposed to Mencken.

    Anyway, I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that Mrs. Johnston was black.

    [The motion on the table is that anony-coward “Frank N. Stein” take his baseless allegations of racism to another blog. All in favor, say aye. — P]

    Frank N. Stein (bf276f)

  40. NK: Ahhh yes… The woman who shot at cops, was the shot and killed, and people are pissed… I remember… I thought that’s who it was, but I wanted to make sure…

    Screwed up warrent or not, I tend to have little sympathy for anyone who shots at a cop.

    Frank, I’m sure it’s just outside your ability to understand, but the cops that she shot at were minorities too.

    And as we all no, minorities can’t be racist…

    As for the motion on the table, I second it.

    Scott Jacobs (a1de9d)

  41. And as we all no, minorities can’t be racist…

    ‘…as we all know…’

    Honest, I’m awake…

    Scott Jacobs (a1de9d)

  42. Apparently in Scott’s world, the rightness of an action depends on whether a cop is involved. Someone breaks into your home and points a gun in your face when you’ve done nothing wrong? Well so long as the person is an agent of the state (impossible to prove in the moment, as anyone can yell ‘police’ while violating your sanctuary), I guess that’s ok then.

    Mrs. Johnston was right to shoot at any armed invader, government goon or private criminal.

    And I’m so glad the law is keeping us safe from drugs. Although I’ve never seen a drug blow a hole in someone’s head….

    Frank N. Stein (bf276f)

  43. She shot FIRST. No one disputes that fact. Shooting at a cop means they shoot BACK. This is a simple equation mastered by thinking men and women the world over. They weren’t wearing street cloths. They were wearing uniforms and gear that CLEARLY labled them as the police. Those uniforms look like that so that NO ONE can say “I didn’t know they were cops…” She saw them, she raised her gun (raised it, after they entered) and pulled the trigger. Had she merely raised it, she’d be fine, most likely. The hand-tying of the police has them holding fire until they actually get shot at.

    Frank, you need to look at the death tolls from drugs, as opposed to people killed by the police in ANY situation. Bet you your next paycheck drugs kill more anually.

    Someone breaks into my home and points a gun at me, as is – as any child of three could tell – a cop, I sure as hell won’t fire. I won’t even bring the gun up. If I do bring the gun up, I’ll drop it like it was on fire. Pointing guns at cops for any reason = bad…

    Shooting at a cop for any reason = just plain stupid. Often fatally so.

    I’m sorry you’re unable to understand that… Now Mr P, where’s the nuking of Herr Dim-Bulb? He’s chewing up bandwidth…

    Scott Jacobs (a1de9d)

  44. Aye!

    Lurking Observer (5a757b)

  45. The ayes have it.

    Patterico (a8fa4a)

  46. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to use foul language, but…

    Why the fuck do people not think that cops shouldn’t fire back when shot upon? How stupid are those people?

    G (722480)

  47. dafydd,

    You wrote,

    “Mencken was a universal cynic and misanthrope; but in fact he was quietly, almost secretly, a “godfather” to many blacks, Jews, and women. (Just as we found out, long after his death, that Mark Twain secretly and anonymously paid for a college education for more than a hundred young black men.)”

    Are you implying that Twain is widely viewed as a racist (like Mencken)? Anyone who has read Mark Twain’s writings would not be suprised that he contributed to the education of young black men. I have heard of people accusing Twain of racism solely on the fact he used the “N” word but that is so silly it does not even desreve comment.

    pep(Just as we found out, long after his death, that Mark Twain secretly and anonymously paid for a college education for more than a hundred young black men.)ster (dfa617)

  48. I think you’re all missing the point.

    Will no one here defend the noble, serviceable, indispensable HyperText Markup Language from the unjust slur implicit in this rebranding?

    Beldar (8b93ba)

  49. This is after all a new affectation of “Retardo” Montalban. It could be worse. Some people think they are Napoleon.

    nk (79f144)

  50. “Why not annihiliation?”

    Now THERE’S a bumper sticker.

    Knemon (bbb1e8)

  51. “Not that the KKK at the time focused exclusively on race. No, they had an agenda for the entire social order.”

    And Father Coughlin, their ideological kissing cousin (barred from joining, cuz he was one of them Papists), had a magazine called Social Justice.

    I just love pointing that out. Social. Justice. It’s like trying to rebrand the swastika as a peace sign.

    Knemon (bbb1e8)


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