Skip to content

Miscellaneous Rambling

Great Mencken article at The American Conservative. Three brief excerpts: "When Mencken started at the Baltimore Herald in 1899, the newspaper had a spittoon at every desk but not enough typewriters to go around." "Everyone involved in making the city's news seems to have been drunk more or less perpetually: the judges, the sheriffs, the reporters, the typesetters, and the press operators." "By his own reckoning, Mencken produced over the course of his career approximately ten million words on literature, language, music, food, politics." * * * * * * * I'm kinda surprised to see the managing editor at The American Spectator writing for The American Conservative. I've always considered TAS as heavily stained with the neo-conservative mark. Maybe I'm wrong about that. * * * * * * * TAS, however, used to be the best conservative magazine out there, hands-down. R. Emmett Tyrrell's "The Continuing Crisis" was one of the best monthly columns around (and, come to think of it, laid out similarly to this "Miscellaneous Rambling" weekly "column" at TDE; the comparisons, alas, end there). Tyrrell's was the first thing I read when the magazine arrived, followed quickly with Ben Stein's autobiographical column. I would then search for anything by Tom Bethel or P.J. O'Rourke. * * * * * * * While checking out the TAS website, I see that Tyrrell and Stein are still writing regularly for TAS. I'm going to start going back there more often. Who knows, maybe I'll subscribe again someday.

Comments

Latest