Many of the perspectives of journalist H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) don’t align with the values typically found in the pages of the Christian Century. His diaries are full of explicitly racist and anti-Semitic rants. He was an avowed opponent of organized religion and representative democracy, a militaristic hawk, a skeptic regarding large portions of math and science, and a man obsessed with his own legacy.
Yet for all the cynicism of this influential curmudgeon, Mencken was a scholar of American English who often wrote famously clever and colorful things. When outraged readers would write to Mencken at the Baltimore Sun, he was known to have replied with a preprinted postcard:
Dear Sir or Madam:
You may be right.
Yours sincerely,
H. L. Mencken
