William Jennings Bryan, 65, dies in his sleep in Dayton, napping after church. He’s been making soooo many speeches since the end of the trial, in the hot Tennessee sun. In fact, he was scheduled to finally deliver the closing speech that he was precluded from giving during the trial. Bryan was the Democratic presidential candidate in 1896, 1900 and 1908, losing to McKinley twice and Taft once, his share of the popular vote declining with each election. He was secretary of state under Wilson and more recently promoted real estate in Florida.
Clarence Darrow expresses sorrow, saying he’d supported Bryan for president – twice.
H. L. Mencken, writing about William Jennings Bryan in The Baltimore Evening Sun: “His one yearning was to keep his yokels heated up – to lead his forlorn mob against the foe. That foe, alas, refused to be alarmed. It insisted upon seeing the battle as a comedy.”
German nationalists will put on Aryan plays, whatever that means, with Aryan actors.
It is so hard to read Mencken's description of Bryan and not think of Trump. "What really moved him was a lust for revenge." "Bryan, at his best, was simply a magnificent job-seeker. The issues that he bawled about usually meant nothing to him. He was ready to abandon them whenever he could make votes by doing so, and to take up new ones at a moment's notice." "He was ignorant, bigoted, self-seeking, blatant and dishonest." "It was hard to believe,,, that he had traveled, that he had been received in civilized societies, that he had been a high officer of state. He seemed only a poor clod like those around him...full of an almost pathological hatred of learning, all human dignity, all beauty, all fine and noble things...Imagine a gentleman, and you have imagined everything that he was not." Whew!
ReplyDeleteI don't know that he was quite as hypocritical as Mencken makes him out to be. Certainly his crusades against the demon rum and evolution came after he was done with the idea of elected office (and vice versa), although there were still speaking fees and yokel adoration to be garnered.
ReplyDeleteDuring the course of writing this blog, I've quoted extensively from his surprisingly well written reportage on the 1912 party conventions and watched his one incredibly inept attempt at high office as Wilson's secretary of state.