A College Student Icon on College Students

I'm reading Michael J. Sandel's Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? right now and in it he essentially proposes that there's no such thing as objectivity. That we all, through our parents and communities, are shaped so independently with such strength, that it's impossible to communicate and make decisions without revealing in some way our own feelings, biases, and opinions.

Last week, Russell Baker reviewed a new collection of H.L. Mencken's work and I had to pull this quote out. There was a strangely healthy bias coming through in the 20s and 30s media that I feel like, if we're careful, we might be pulling back into some media outlets today. When you read old publication's like Mencken's Mercury, you realize how crazy it was then, and how perhaps the way we project what's happening in the world today isn't so uniquely absurd. Voices from every side had their own paper or pamphlet and many citizens read what they wanted to read. The only difference now is that I can see you screaming.

Because of Mencken's insane commentaries (which were ultimately banned due to being so "obscene"), college students flocked to him and praised his work. He had this to say about them:

I have, in fact, almost no interest in the ideas of college students. They seem to me to be simply immature me. They are always following fresh messiahs. That I served for a short while as one of those messiahs was not only surprising to me, but extremely offensive.

-H.L. Mencken, Prejudices

What has changed?