>"You don't hear that part much. I think it makes certain people nervous"

Many people get nervous with some of Mencken. You know, the parts where he admits to being a pro-aristocracy elitist, anti-christian, anti-semite, anti-democratic, anti-Democratic, anti-metaphysics curmudgeon.

For example: "The United States is probably the only country ever heard of on earth in which stockbrokers are almost ipso facto members of good society. Even the Jews among them acquire a certain enhancement of status. In all other societies that I know of they sit below the salt, and in many countries they are thought of as inferior to ordinary business men, and the general attitude toward them is that of suspicion. They are regarded as traders of a peculiarly anti-social type, and that is precisely what they are. But in the United States they belong to the best clubs, and their wives and daughters move in very haughty circles." H.L. Mencken, para 267, MINORITY REPORTS, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1956

At the same time, Mencken was responsible for the Post papers paying the costs to have the ACLU send Clarence Darrow down to Tenn. to defend in the Scopes trial. Interesting choice along with Rand. At least H.L. seemed to take himself far less seriously than Ayn, and he did have a sense of humor.