F.D.R versus H.L Mencken(the crabman of Baltimore).

The spectacle of self-important was on full display the other night at,indeed,a Saturday special the White House Correspondents Association were boring elicits meet and greet telling lame jokes impressing each other to the point self-aggrandizement is comman place.Then phonies from Hollywood airing there sense of being to common folk superiority believing there are so clever,so amusing but in reality are just so insipid.And talking about being in insipid,there was host Conan O'Brien,lack luster performance,a son of Ireland,but taste of blend soup over cooked,oh yeah some good lines but mostly a dud.The President wasn't bad,his lines well written far more tasty and less pasty then O'Brien's.
This event remembered me,of time when Hollywood didn't meet Washington and Press corp was the business of news not entertainment.Indeed,in such event there was show down between Franklin Delano Roosevelt(F.D.R) and H.L Mencken.Mencken was dean of journalists,a great word smith,cynic and the crab man of Baltimore(my words to describe Mencken).For Mencken was very much part of Baltimore,as is crab cakes.
On 12/11/1934 F.D.R and Mencken went to the Gridiron Club dinner(which still held today).The Gridiron Club is composed of leading members of the Washington Press Corp.The principal speakers at the off-the-record affairs usually are a prominent member of the opposition party and the president.
In a departure from custom,the opposition speech was given by H.L Mencken of the Baltimore Sun.In reply,the president engaged in what seemed to be a diatribe against the American press,which he said was shot through with "stupidity,cowardice and philistinism," and staffed by men "who could not pass the entrance examination for Harvard and Tuskegee,or even Yale." It was several minutes before the audience came to realize that he was quoting Mencken's essay,"Journalism in America."