Word: iconoclastic
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...written a fable that will further shock the righteous. In it he puts himself on a level with Voltaire. Christ and Mohammed; he is a hero and the God of the Old Testament is a bogey-villain. In spite of his destructive wit which many even nowadays call blasphemous. Iconoclast Shaw is a kindly soul; like the light-hearted pessimist, his good nature keeps breaking through. Choleric colonels might take their apoplectic death from reading The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God, and the Cambridge (England) public library has barred it, but readers of good-will...
...Mencken, in his chosen role of fiery iconoclast, sears the opening pages of the latest Mercury with an attack on the American public school. The reason for his diatribe, needless to say, is the depression. The public schools, it appears, are spending now about $100 per child each year, where in 1880 they spent $5. Obviously, such an increase as this offers a loophole to one in search of reductions, if only it can be shown to be unjustified. This task Mr. Mencken assumes, asking the natural question: "Has the increase in intelligence among the products of the schools been...
Because the U. S. colonists were subject to laws passed by a far-away Parliament they drifted "toward the belief that if a law interfered with their business and profits it need not be obeyed." No more an iconoclast than a panegyrist, Adams thinks Washington saved the U. S., not by military brilliance but by force of character: "In plain truth we see now that the Revolution was only saved from being an abortive rebellion by two factors . . . one the character of Washington, and the other the marshaling against England of European powers." Many of the "best people" were Tories...
...Author. In the days when Chicago was having a literary renaissance Ben Hecht was one of the better-known in a group that included Sherwood Anderson, Theodore Dreiser, Carl Sandburg, Edgar Lee Masters. Called variously iconoclast, intellectual mountebank, "in-sincere fiddler," "Pagliacci of the Fire Escape," Hecht was famed for his conversation; "his subtle innuendoes, his philosophical observations, his penetrating irony, his vehement indignation, his gentle persuasiveness, his dubious facts." Once a collaborator with Maxwell Bodenheim, Hecht soon quarreled with him: the quarrel is still going on.* Mustachioed, with rumpled hair, pouchy eyes, Ben Hecht looks like what...
Often in their attempts to exonerate themselves they defame the character of others. A few, not intimately connected with the struggle, merely smash about at random with the pure joy of the iconoclast. Such a man is Prince von Bulow. In his recently published memoirs he violently attacks a man upon no greater provocation than that he told the truth. In the admission of Bethmann Hollweg that the German invasion of Belgium was a "breach of international law" Bulow finds a stunning tactical error. This may be true, but the Prince goes on to say that Bethmann should have...