Monday, April 6: The Scribbler
MENCKEN MODERNIZED
by James Lincoln Warren
The following definitions were taken from Chapter X, “The Jazz Webster”, of H. L. Mencken’s A Book of Burlesques (Borzoi, 1907)—they were obviously written in imitation of Ambrose Bierce. But seeing as more than a century has passed since the marvelous Mr. M formulated them, I have added emendations below each entry.
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ARGUMENT. A means of persuasion. The agents of argumentation under a democracy, in the order of their potency, are (a) whiskey, (b) beer, (c) cigars, (d) tears.
(e) promise of sex , (f) money, (g) basketball tickets.
BREVITY. The quality that makes cigarettes, speeches, love affairs and ocean voyages bearable.
And short stories.
CELEBRITY. One who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn’t know.
Or, one who is known to many persons who wish they’d never heard of him. Or her.
CIVILIZATION. A concerted effort to remedy the blunders and check the practical joking of God.
The illusion that we are somehow superior to our ancestors.
CONFIDENCE. The feeling that makes one believe a man, even when one knows that one would lie in his place.
The falacious conviction that one appears less ridiculous than everyone else.
DEMOCRACY. The theory that two thieves will steal less than one, and three less than two, and four less than three, and so on ad infinitum; the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
The antonym of REPUBLICANISM, the theory that blowhard radio commentators should control our lives.
EVIL. That which one believes of others. It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.
That which one believes of others (a) who belong to the other political party; (b) who speak fluent Russian, Arabic, Iranian, Pashto, Urdu, or Korean; (c) who would rather live illegally in the U.S. than legally starve somewhere else.
EXPERIENCE. A series of failures. Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again next time.
An argument which people too lazy to think use to discredit anything intelligent.
FIRMNESS. A form of stupidity; proof of an inability to think the same thing out twice.
That moral self-righteousness which renders consensus utterly unnecessary, particularly with regard to foreign policy.
FRIENDSHIP. A mutual belief in the same fallacies, mountebanks, hobgoblins and imbecilities.
The affection one feels for one’s enemy at a bar when the enemy is buying.
GENTLEMAN. One who never strikes a woman without provocation; one on whose word of honor the betting odds are at least 1 to 2.
In current usage, anybody who is apprehended during the commission of a crime. Synonym for suspect.
HISTORIAN. An unsuccessful novelist.
One whose lies have acquired authority.
HONEYMOON. The time during which the bride believes the bridegroom’s word of honor.
Figuratively, the period following the election of a new President during which time the opposing party only criticizes him when there is an audience.
HOPE. A pathological belief in the occurrence of the impossible.
The emotion characterizing the period between the submission of a manuscript and the receipt of a rejection letter.
HUMANITARIAN. One who would be sincerely sorry to see his neighbor’s children devoured by wolves.
One who is willing to spend someone else’s money for the benefit of all mankind.
IDEALIST. One who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
One who, on noticing that cabbage makes better soup than a rose, will wear a cabbage in his buttonhole. Cf. fashion.
IMMORALITY. The morality of those who are having a better time.
The ethical condition of the opposing political party regarding reproductive rights.
IMMORTALITY. The condition of a dead man who doesn’t believe that he is dead.
Not being out of print.
JEALOUSY. The theory that some other fellow has just as little taste.
Not to be confused with ENVY, the theory that one’s rival’s success is the result of (a) dumb luck, or (b) a vast conspiracy.
JUDGE. An officer appointed to mislead, restrain, hypnotize, cajole, seduce, browbeat, flabbergast and bamboozle a jury in such a manner that it will forget all the facts and give its decision to the best lawyer. The objection to judges is that they are seldom capable of a sound professional judgment of lawyers. The objection to lawyers is that the best are the worst.
Someone who believes that a black muumuu is an instrument of apotheosis.
JURY. A group of twelve men who, having lied to the judge about their hearing, health and business engagements, have failed to fool him.
Nowadays, a group of twelve persons too stupid to understand the question, let alone the answer.
LIAR. (a) One who pretends to be very good; (b) one who pretends to be very bad.
(c) One who publicly discusses his sex life.
MORALITY. The theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99% of them are wrong.
In practice, the excuse for objecting to anything without bothering to think about what it means.
OPTIMIST. The sort of man who marries his sister’s best friend.
Anybody who arrives in Los Angeles with a screenplay in his suitcase.
POPULARITY. The capacity for listening sympathetically when men boast of their wives and women complain of their husbands.
For celebrities, the propensity for getting arrested at night clubs.
POSTERITY. The penalty of a faulty technique.
The people who get to pay for all the fun we’re having right now.
PSYCHOLOGIST. One who sticks pins into babies, and then makes a chart showing the ebb and flow of their yells.
A megalomaniac on television to whom one turns for advice on how to live, or who is featured on two-hour infomercials on PBS during Pledge Week.
PSYCHOTHERAPY. The theory that the patient will probably get well anyhow, and is certainly a damned fool.
A medical treatment for celebrity; recently replaced by cosmetic surgery.
QUACK. A physician who has decided to admit it.
Also, what a slick lawyer claims a duck doesn’t do.
REMORSE. Regret that one waited so long to do it.
The last ditch attempt at fooling a judge and jury after the conviction but before the sentencing.
SELF-RESPECT. The secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.
Recently supplanted by SELF-ESTEEM, the belief that one does not have to earn anything in order to deserve getting it.
SOB. A sound made by women, babies, tenors, fashionable clergymen, actors and drunken men.
And jailed celebrities.
TEMPTATION. An irresistible force at work on a movable body.
Anything with a warning label.
UNIVERSITY. A place for elevating sons above the social rank of their fathers. In the great American universities men are ranked as follows: 1. Seducers; 2. Fullbacks; 3. Booze-fighters; 4. Pitchers and Catchers; 5. Poker players; 6. Scholars; 7. Christians.
Nowadays, an institution devised for the purpose of bankrupting parents while preparing their children for unemployment.
VERS LIBRE. A device for making poetry easier to write and harder to read.
A now discredited concept of poetry that has been replaced by urban rap.
WART. Something that outlasts ten thousand kisses.
A blogger.
You brought to light many good ones. Why not consider a JLWebster?
You have not merely updated the words of Mencken, you have given new and greater meaning to his definitions. Self respect-self esteem should be required reading for all those wondering why a person who, upon discovering that life actually contains disappointments and setbacks, decides to pick up a gun and kill everyone in sight.
So many words of wisdom here, but then at the very end you had to spoil everything by comparing bloggers to warts. I am a blogger.
. I am a blogger…..
I wouldn\’t worry.
Your blog is worth more than ten thousand kisses.
So is Criminal Brief.
Maybe he just wants ten thousand kisses?
I liked the evasive way to include pH in popularity.
Enjoyed the article.
Under EVIL, you wrote:
“That which one believes of others … (c) who would rather live illegally in the U.S. than legally starve somewhere else.”
This includes a couple of assumptions — that people are legally starving elsewhere and that they will inevitably starve unless they live illegally in the United States — so the reader (and this is my own inference) should conclude that illegal immigration is acceptable, even humane, under such conditions.
If you could adduce irrefutable facts to support these assumptions, your definition would have unimpeachable validity.
H. L. Mencken’s libels against Christianity were defective: hostile cheapshots at others’ philosophy based on no demonstrable facts but only bigotry.
As I used to tell my students: Opinions are like noses; everyone has one and they smell. Unless you can offer facts to support your opinion, it’s worse than worthless — it has the force of a lie.
Mike, satire is the art of exaggeration to make a point.
In any case, the biggest unsupported assumption in that particular definition is not what you assert at all—it’s that because people are in the U.S. illegally to work, they must be evil.
For the record, I do not believe that our borders should be porous. But it is naive to blame everything on the illegal immigrants themselves, leaving out unrealistic American policies, public demand for low prices on agricultural products, unscrupulous and greedy employers, ineffective foreign governments, and so forth.
“… satire is the art of exaggeration to make a point.” No argument possible there — but to be effective, satire must be rooted in reality (e.g., Swift’s A MODEST PROPOSAL, which was rooted in a terrible reality). And to “be rooted in reality” requires factual support, which is not immediately apparent in your initial post.
“… because people are in the U.S. illegally to work, they must be evil.” Another assumption: that they’re all here to work. At least half a million are here to work at being criminals. As for the distinction between “evil” and “illegal,” it’s squishy, at best. Is a lawbreaker necessarily evil? And what is “evil,” anyway? You decide.
“… it is naive to blame everything on the illegal immigrants themselves, leaving out unrealistic American policies, public demand for low prices on agricultural products, unscrupulous and greedy employers, ineffective foreign governments, and so forth.” You could add non-governmental special interest groups and the large mainline religious organizations to “so forth.” It’s a perfect, nation-breaking storm of mutual but short-sighted interests.
Velma loves you anyway. Warts and all.
Mike, you are still missing the point, especially by invoking Swift. Swift was not seriously suggesting that the Irish actually eat their children, was he? And in point of fact, people have never gone to war over how to open an egg, horses can’t talk, and you can’t extract light from cucumbers, either.
As far as “factual support” is concerned, I take issue with your entire line of reasoning. You claim there is no factual basis to my assertions without acknowledging the fundamental truth that illegal immigration’s first and foremost cause is abject poverty. That is a fact. Your quibble is with the way I express that truth, by claiming that the details are wrong. But neither do you support your claims to the contrary beyond simply pronouncing that I can’t prove my point. As far as documentation goes, so far it’s a wash. In any case, I’m not trying to prove anything—I’m only trying to express something.
And I can’t believe you asked, “what is ‘evil’, anyway?” You could not have possibly said anything that more strongly announces that you don’t understand the point at all, that definitions aren’t objective to begin with. (I suppose that depends on what the definition of “is” is.)
Finally, witticisms are not intended to have footnotes. (And I thought I was pedantic.)
I note that you did not take issue with any of the other undocumented assertions I made in my definitions, either, many of which are categorically untrue. That’s because they are exaggerations. Satire. A university is not actually intended as a means to bankrupt parents. Judges do not actually believe that they are gods. Mexican peasants are not actually starving. So what?
I can only conclude that you reacted to the one issue because you have such strong prejudices regarding it.
>H. L. Mencken’s libels against Christianity were defective: hostile cheapshots at others’ philosophy based on no demonstrable facts but only bigotry.
Mike, could you expand (or expound) upon that? I’m woefully ignorant of this aspect.
Thanks.
“Swift was not seriously suggesting that the Irish actually eat their children, was he?” No, but he was seriously suggesting that absentee English landlords were destroying Irish children through their neglect. That was the “terrible reality” to which I was referring.
“… the fundamental truth that illegal immigration’s first and foremost cause is abject poverty. That is a fact.” Not “abject poverty”: the desire for more money, quite a different thing.
“And I can’t believe you asked, ‘what is “evil”, anyway?’ You could not have possibly said anything that more strongly announces that you don’t understand the point at all, that definitions aren’t objective to begin with.” You’re correct; it all depends on who’s doing the defining, right? As in this instance (I’m sure you’ll recognize the source):
but of this be sure,
To do ought good never will be our task,
But ever to do ill our sole delight,
As being the contrary to his high will
Whom we resist. If then his Providence
Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,
Our labour must be to pervert that end,
And out of good still to find means of evil
“I can only conclude that you reacted to the one issue because you have such strong prejudices regarding it.” That should be emended to read “strong concerns regarding it.”
Leigh: “I’m woefully ignorant of this aspect.”
Since I believe in letting an author speak for himself and since thorough study is the surest cure for ignorance, why don’t you take some time to read Mencken’s entire corpus — and I would welcome hearing from you about any and all instances in which he does not refer to Christianity in a derogatory fashion without evincing bigotry unsupported by anything even approaching fact. (I’m being serious here; I haven’t read everything he wrote, so I might’ve missed one of his essays in support, say, of the divinity of the Galilean carpenter.) My TBR pile is already altitudinous, and Mencken isn’t in it.
(I’m sure you’ll recognize the source):
I know! I know! Our new administration?
Hush ADD–go tie your sneakers.
I have to agree that opinion/satire is solely of the person writing it.
Getting it (and its politcally charged meaning) is of the reader.
Mr. Mike read what Mr. Scribbler emended. He is no more wrong in his opinion than the creator.
Agree to disagree.
You are both correct.
In my humble, not asked for (nor wanted) opinion!
Great stuff, both yours and Mencken’s. That definition of humanitarian was paraphrased by the Waldo Lydecker character in the movie of LAURA. (It may be in Vera Caspary’s novel, too. I’m not sure.)
Thanks, Mike. Your knowledge vis-à-vis Mencken is considerably greater than mine. When I’d read Mencken long ago, I hadn’t been tuned to those sentiments. Then again, it took me well after college to tune into religious sentiments of, say, T. S. Eliot (some might say I rebelled) or more particularly, Bildungsroman.
James, did you ever get to listen to the late Alistair Cooke’s “Letter From America” on BBC Radio? (I set my alarm for early in the morning here in Kansas.) Cooke was a hardcore Mencken fan, and may have known him.