Eugene David<br>...The One-Minute Pundit

Posted 5:53 PM by Gene

Say, maybe now's a good time to quote from that commentary about the Times' "public editor":

In 1976, I delivered the Mencken Day speech. I was invited because I had edited a collection of some of [H. L. Mencken's] writing on journalism (A Gang of Pecksniffs). I said then that it was possible, even probable, that he was pulling his punches when he wrote for publication about people at The Sun, The Evening Sun and The Sunday Sun.

Why did I think so? He had begun writing that diary in the 1930s, and in the 1940s he wrote a three-volume Thirty-five Years of Newspaper Work. He had both sealed, deposited at the [Enoch] Pratt [Library in Baltimore] and embargoed until 25 and 35 years, respectively, after his death, plus a similarly sealed and embargoed four-volume collection of "letters and documents relating to the Sunpapers." Hmmm.

He died in 1956. After 1981 and 1991, researchers were able to read at last his unvarnished assessments of his Baltimore colleagues. They were brutal! His worst deprecations were those involving top-level editors (one had "highly elastic principles"; another was "a bigot" whose editorials were "idiotic"; the Sunpapers writer second only to Mencken himself in national standing professionally was "a notably stupid ... second-rate Southerner") He also mused sourly about his longtime publisher and the chairman of the board.

These were people he had socialized with for years and who regarded their relationships with him as those of close - in some cases the very closest of - friends.

Remember this the next time the hacks talk of QUAGMIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and our PLATINUM AGE OF ENTERTAINMENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!