a song from an angry old rich white guy.
I don't remember how many decades it was, probably sometime in the 1990s when some old geezer with one of those sleazy little long braids asked me if I was going to hear the Stones on their then current tour. I don't remember what the theme was but I remember making a comment about Mick and his old Stones doing the Oxygen Tank Tour. If you want to know what geezers my age who never grew up and developed musical taste will be doing a decade from now.
My brother told me about it, we had a good laugh and a discussion of how greedy those guys are, Mick with his old stones, Eric Clapton, Jon Bon Jovi . . .
The list of what I'd rather listen to could fill this blog. I mean all eleven years of it.
Update: Simels Says:
You were born an old fogey, you poor sad bastard. To paraphrase Menken, you're obsessed with the idea that somebody, somewhere may be enjoying themselves..
Poor sad that I'm uninterested in what the 80 year old Mick and his old stones are putting out for unreconstructed teeny-boppers to buy? What's to be sad about?
And you really want to go with Mencken? That's M-e-n-C-k-e-n, by the way.
Doris Grumbach said when she reluctantly faced the truth about him after that annoyingly repetitive "as H.L. Mencken said" 70s fashion and his diaries started to be published (the editor admitted he was forced by editing them to come to the same conclusions):
. . . Mencken asked that his diaries be withheld from publication until 25 years after his death. Now we have them, or at least, one-third of them (I shudder to think what nastiness the editor has withheld from us in the other two-thirds), and we can learn once again of the Sage of Baltimore's mean-spirited intolerance on many subjects: mill-workers, whom he calls "lintheads"; blacks; Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt and all Roosevelt's Cabinet and advisers; historians ("if any good ones ever appear in America"); his neighbors ("complete morons"); a few Methodists; a few Catholics; his writer-friends, who are almost without exception portrayed as drunks, fools, mad or incompetent; Winston Churchill; women writers; women; doctors; lawyers; other journalists.
But far and away the strongest bigotry is against Jews. There are 24 racial labels, attributed stories and direct insults in the recently published diaries. Some seem to be intended as journalistic accuracy: "Lawrence Spivak is a young Harvard Jew"; Charles Angoff, "like most of the young Jewish intellectuals"; Simon Sobeloff of Baltimore, "a smart Jew"; George Boas of Johns Hopkins, "a brisk, clever Jew"; Morris Fishbein, a "shrewd Jew."
Sometimes Mencken uses the hated designation inaccurately for a whole group: Sinclair Lewis wanted to sell a novel to Hollywood: "The Jews have offered him $30,000." Communists are all Jews, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (he quotes a Mrs. Reed, who headed a garment factory) is operated by New York Jews. He speaks to a club in Baltimore and is angry at the questions directed to him. "Most of the questioners were radicals and it was apparent, in the rather dim light, that most of them were Jews." Union members are all "Jewish communists." Mencken seems pleased to be able to record that Johns Hopkins turned down an offer to have the Institute for Advanced Study on its campus because "the donors were Jews." The quality of a Baltimore distillery's product deteriorated after it was bought by Jews.
Sometimes he is uncertain, perhaps because the name is not indicative, but still, he wishes to make clear his suspicions: James Hunecker's wife Josephine, "who I believe is a Jew"; Julius Haldeman, "a highly dubious Jew"; and Sinclair Lewis's new wife, who, he suggests, is hiding her true identity. "She is a young Jewess rejoicing in the name of Marcella Powers. ... " On the other hand, he is pleased to note that an editor, Richard Danielson, whose name aroused his suspicions, "is not a Jew."
To me, the most offensive references are to Mencken's pleasure at the exclusiveness of his club. Walking to the Maryland Club one day he hears from S. Blount Mason Jr., its secretary, the horrendous story of a man named Winter, a high official in a shipbuilding plant, who "seemed to be a presentable fellow," and was elected to the club. One day Winter entertained an elderly "and palpably Jewish gentleman in the dining room," who turned out to be his father. Mason investigated, found the member's true name was Winternitz. He was asked to resign, and did.
Mencken follows this narrative with another unlovely paragraph: "Mason told me there was no objection in the board of governors to bringing an occasional Jew to a meal in the club, but that this only applied to out-of-town Jews, not to local ones. There was a time when the club always had one Jewish member, but the last was Jacob Ulman. Ulman was married to a Christian woman, a great-granddaughter of Thomas Jefferson, and had little to do with the other Jews of Baltimore. When he died the board of governors decided that he should be the last of the Chosen on the club roll. There is no other Jew in Baltimore who seems suitable." The "Chosen" is one of Mencken's milder designations. He calls a well-known Baltimore businessman "a dreadful kike."
There is more of this ugly stuff in the book and apparently even more in the unprinted diaries. "The litany could go on," writes Charles A. Fecher, the editor, whose own sense of decency makes him admit "clearly and unequivocably: Mencken was an anti-Semite." The Post's critic denies this, claiming Mencken makes "exceptionally, generous appreciative comments ... about specific individuals who happen to be Jewish ... " It is true that Mencken never labels his publisher Alfred Knopf as a Jew or Walter Winchell, people who, it is only fair to note, were in a position to affect his career.
I must say this, reluctant as I am to characterize his recent defenders on this issue. (Some of my best friends are antisemites.) Generations later, in a climate that is still rife with threats and destructive acts against Jews and Jewish institutions, those who defend a writer such as H. L. Mencken must be said to possess an antisemitic sensibility themselves.
That the kind of "good times" you mean?
You really should have read more when you were younger, the deficit in your store of knowledge really tells whenever you try to pick a brawl with me, Stupy.
You were born an old fogey, you poor sad bastard. To paraphrase Menken, you're obsessed with the idea that somebody, somewhere may be enjoying themselves..
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