HL Mencken - C/D?

i'm surprised we've never had a thread for him. i think he was one of the greatest american writers ever - like if mark twain had spent his career writing nothing but his "damned human race" type stuff - and easily one of the single biggest influences on my writing. he hated pretty much everything - and i mean HATED - except beer and german composers and the dictionary, but i can't think of a more joyous, exuberant writer in the english language. everything he ever wrote reads like he spent hours polishing it, and of course he probably knocked it out in an hour and never gave it a second thought.

snopes.com is full of inflammatory quotes falsely attributed to famous people. with mencken, of course he said it, he mumbled things like this in his sleep:

"The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."