“American critics are like American universities. They both have dull and half-dead faculties.”

2009

"Fanfare", in H. L. Mencken (1920)
Context: American literature has been, and is, singularly deficient in established critics who have anything like a rational conception of their jobs. The majority, initiate in a few of the patent rituals of Aristotle and Quintilian, don the forbidding robes of high priests to Sweetness and Light, and go about their business much as if the idea were to keep all they know to themselves.

Statement in conversation (7 January 1942)
Disputed, Hitler's Table Talks (1941-1944) (published 1953)

2000s, Europe's Anti-American Obsession (2003)

Source: Me Talk Pretty One Day

Source: Empire of the Sun (1984), p. 201
Context: He waited for the roll-call to end, reflecting on the likely booty attached to a dead American pilot. Soon enough, one of the Americans would be shot down into Lunghua Camp. Jim tried to decide which of the ruined buildings would best conceal his body. Carefully eked out, the kit and equipment could be bartered with Basie for extra sweet potatoes for months to come, and even perhaps a warm coat for the winter. There would be sweet potatoes for Dr. Ransome, whom Jim was determined to keep alive. He rocked on his heels and listened to an old woman crying in the nearby ward. Through the window was the pagoda at Lunghua Airfield. Already the flak tower appeared in a new light. For another hour Jim stood in line with the missionary widows, watched by the sentry. Dr. Ransome and Dr. Bowen had set off with Sergeant Nagata to the commandant's office, perhaps to be interrogated. The guards moved around the silent camp with their roster boards, carrying out repeated roll-calls. The war was about to end and yet the Japanese were obsessed with knowing exactly how many prisoners they held. Jim closed his eyes to calm his mind, but the sentry barked at him, suspecting that Jim was about to play some private game of which Sergeant Nagata would disapprove.

..The term “anti-American” is usually used by the American establishment to discredit...its critics. Once someone is branded anti-American, the chances are that he or she will be judged before they are heard, and the argument will be lost in the welter of bruised national pride.<BR>But what does the term “anti-American” mean? Does it mean you are anti-jazz? Or... opposed to freedom of speech?...That you have a quarrel with giant sequoias? Does it mean that you don’t admire the hundreds of thousands of American citizens who marched against nuclear weapons, or the thousands... who forced their government to withdraw from Vietnam? Does it mean that you hate all Americans?<BR> This sly conflation of America’s culture, music, literature, the breathtaking physical beauty of the land, the ordinary pleasures of ordinary people with criticism of the U.S. government’s foreign policy (about which, thanks to America’s “free press”, sadly most Americans know very little) is... extremely effective strategy.<BR>To call someone “anti-American”, indeed to be anti-American, (or for that matter, anti-Indian or anti-Timbuktuan) is not just racist, it’s a failure of the imagination. An inability to see the world in terms other than those the establishment has set out for you... If you don’t love us, you hate us... If you’re not with us, you’re with the terrorists.

Come September, given at the Lensic Performing Arts Center, Santa Fe, NM, USA http://ada.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/politics/comeSeptember.pdf (29 Sep 2002).
Speeches

Sometimes quoted as: Half of the American people never read a newspaper. Half never voted for president. One hopes it is the same half.
[Bill, Maxwell, http://www.sptimes.com/2002/07/07/Columns/In_gloomy_times__let_.shtml, In gloomy times, let's try to find a sense of humor, St. Petersberg Times, 2002-07-07, 2008-10-04]
Variant: Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.
Source: 1990s, Screening History (1992), Ch. 1: The Prince and the Pauper, p. 5

http://yoramettinger.newsnet.co.il/Front/Newsnet/reports.asp?reportId=59798