He's generally forgotten now and was probably most recently remembered by those who know of him for his revealed racism and antisemitism, but I was reminded by reading Hofstadter on anti-intellectualism of how influential H.L. Mencken once was. Apparently, he was right about pretty everything! Or at least about how things were in 1930 and except for the racism and antisemitism. From his Wikipedia bio:
As a scholar, Mencken is known for The American Language, a multi-volume study of how the English language is spoken in the United States. As an admirer of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, he was an outspoken opponent of organized religion, theism, censorship, populism, and representative democracy, the last of which he viewed as a system in which inferior men dominated their superiors.[2] Mencken was a supporter of scientific progress and was critical of osteopathy and chiropractic. He was also an open critic of economics.
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