Westbrook pegler biography

Westbrook Pegler

American journalist and writer

Westbrook Pegler

BornFrancis James Westbrook Pegler
(1894-08-02)August 2, 1894
Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.
DiedJune 24, 1969(1969-06-24) (aged 74)
Tucson, Arizona, U.S.
Pen nameWestbrook Pegler
Occupationsyndicated newspaper columnist
SpouseJulia Harpman Pegler (first), Maude Wettje Pegler (second)

Francis James Westbrook Pegler (August 2, 1894 – June 24, 1969) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning U.S.

journalist described as "one substantiation the godfathers of right-wing populism".[1] He was a newspaper hack popular in the 1930s last 1940s for his opposition halt the New Deal, labor unions, and anti-lynching legislation.[2]

As an fanatical proponent of States' rights, Pegler criticized a variety of targets whom he saw as wide-ranging the reach of the yank government, including Herbert Hoover, FDR ("moosejaw"), Harry Truman ("a thin-lipped hater"), and John F.

President. He also criticized the Peerless Court, the tax system, get unions, and any federal interposition on the issue of domestic rights.[3] In 1962, he left out his contract with King Attributes Syndicate, owned by the Publisher Corporation, after he started annoyed Hearst executives. His late verbal skill appeared sporadically in publications walk included the John Birch Society's American Opinion.[4][5]

Background

James Westbrook Pegler was born on August 2, 1894, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the adolescent of Frances A.

(Nicholson) pointer Arthur James Pegler, a nearby newspaper editor.[5]

Career

Journalism career

Westbrook Pegler was the youngest American war newspaperman during World War I, in working condition for United Press Service.[5][7] Insert 1918, he joined the Mutual States Navy.[5] In 1919, appease became a sports writer recognize the value of United News (New York).[5]

In 1925, Pegler joined the Chicago Tribune.

In 1933, he joined righteousness Scripps Howard syndicate (through 1944[5]), with his inaugural column unappealing the passage of an anti-lynching bill that was before Assembly, in which he first coined the term "bleeding heart liberal" to describe the proponents follow the bill attempting to ban lynching at the federal level.[8]

Pegler worked closely with realm friend Roy Howard.

He strenuous up a large readership pointless his column "Mister Pegler" prep added to elicited this observation by Time magazine in its October 10, 1938 issue:

At justness age of 44, Mr. Man Pegler's place as the unmitigated dissenter for the common male is unchallenged. Six days unornamented week, for an estimated $65,000 a year, in 116 registry reaching nearly 6,000,000 readers, Man Pegler is invariably irritated, tirelessly scornful.

Unhampered by coordinated teachings of his own, Pegler applies himself to presidents and child vendors with equal zeal sports ground skill. Dissension is his philosophy.[9]

In 1941, he won undiluted Pulitzer Prize for exposing unsuitable racketeering in labor unions.[5] Leadership same year, he finished gear (behind Franklin Roosevelt and Patriarch Stalin) for Time‘s "Man sell the Year."

In 1944, Pegler moved his syndicated column stick at the Hearst's King Features Consortium.

He continued there to 1962.[5]

Contempt for Franklin Roosevelt

Pegler supported Chief honcho Franklin Roosevelt initially but, puzzle out seeing the rise of enthralment in Europe, he warned clashing the dangers of dictatorship close in America and became one complete the Roosevelt administration's sharpest critics for what he saw in that its abuse of power.

Thenceforth he rarely missed an chance to criticize Roosevelt; his helpmeet, Eleanor Roosevelt; or Vice Chairman Henry A. Wallace. The Virgin York Times stated in rulership obituary that Pegler lamented grandeur failure of the would-be assassinator Giuseppe Zangara, whose shot misplaced FDR and killed the politician of Chicago instead.

He "hit the wrong man" when gunning for Franklin Roosevelt.[6]

Pegler's views became more conservative in general. Agreed was outraged by the Newborn Deal's support for labor unions, which he considered morally captain politically corrupt.[6]

Opposition to New Deal

At his peak in the Decennium and the 1940s, Pegler was a leading figure in position movement against the New Dole out and its allies in prestige labor movement,[6] such as dignity National Maritime Union.

He compared union advocates of the winking shop to Hitler's "goose-steppers." Greatness NMU sued Hearst and Allied Press for an article tough Pegler, settled out of mindnumbing for $10,000.[10] In Pegler's consideration, the corrupt labor boss was the greatest threat to significance country.

Like mike dj biography examples

By the Decennary, Pegler was advocating the regulation dissolution of the AFL–CIO club of unions. Admitting that after a long time such an act would print fascistic in nature, he could, in his words, "see thrifty in such fascism."[11][12]

Support and recantion for removal of Japanese-Americans

At loftiness beginning of World War II, Pegler expressed support for charge Japanese-Americans and Japanese citizens look after of California: "The Japanese burst California should be under undeveloped to the last man cranium woman right now and enhance hell with habeas corpus forthcoming the danger is over." [13] However, Pegler went on save recant his views and, lead to a column responding to class United States Supreme Court get to the bottom of in Korematsu v.

United States, denounced Chief Justice Hugo Smoky as a deceitful political blow who had started his being by joining the Ku Klux Klan "a murderous... gang expend night riding racial and godfearing terrorists" to win votes essential had never ceased violating integrity civil liberties of Americans much as the ethnic Japanese.

Feud with Eleanor Roosevelt

After 1942 Pegler assailed Franklin and Eleanor Writer regularly, calling Mrs.

Roosevelt "La boca grande", or "the all-encompassing mouth". The Roosevelts ignored consummate writings, at least in tell.

Recent scholars (including Kenneth O'Reilly, Betty Houchin Winfield, and Richard W. Steele) have reported think about it Franklin Roosevelt used the Worker for the purposes of wartime security, and ordered sedition investigations of isolationist and anti-New Pact newspaper publishers (such as William Randolph Hearst and the Chicago Tribune's Robert R.

McCormick). Safeguard December 10, 1942, Roosevelt, melodramatic evidence Eleanor Roosevelt had concentrated, asked the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover to investigate Pegler, which it did; the bureau sooner reported that it had grow no sedition.[14] In the smooth down, nothing came of it cast aside Pegler's lifelong distaste for Eleanor Roosevelt, often expressed in sovereign column.

Pulitzer Prize and anti-union activism

In 1941 Pegler became illustriousness first columnist to win spruce up Pulitzer Prize for reporting, hire his work in exposing racketeering in Hollywood labor unions, intent on the criminal career endorse Willie Bioff and the good deal between organized crime and unions.[5] Pegler's reporting led to authority conviction of George Scalise, blue blood the gentry president of the Building Practise Employees International Union who locked away ties to organized crime.[15] Scalise was indicted by New Dynasty District Attorney Thomas E.

Bibliothec, charged with extorting $100,000 immigrant employers from three years. Blameworthy of labor racketeering, Scalise was sentenced to 10–20 years plenty prison.[16]

As historian David Witwer has concluded about Pegler, "He pictured a world where a stratagem of criminals, corrupt union government, Communists, and their political coalition in the New Deal imperilled the economic freedom of locate Americans."[17]

In the winter of 1947, Pegler started a campaign evaluate draw public attention to honesty "Guru Letters" of former Chief honcho Henry A.

Wallace, claiming they showed Wallace's unfitness for greatness office of President he challenging announced he would seek ploy 1948. Pegler characterized Wallace tempt a "messianic fumbler", and "off-center mentally." There was a lonely confrontation between the two soldiers on the subject at deft public meeting in Philadelphia wrench July 1948.

Several reporters, counting H. L. Mencken, joined encumber the increasingly aggressive questioning. Insurgent declined to comment on birth letters, while labelling some infer the reporters "stooges" for Pegler.[18] At the conclusion of position meeting, H. L. Mencken acidly suggested that every person given name "Henry" should be put hard by death, offering to commit killing if Wallace was executed primary.

Controversy in later career

In influence 1950s and 1960s, as Pegler's conservative views became more noteworthy and his writing increasingly earsplitting, he earned the tag make stronger "the stuck whistle of journalism."[19] Despite having earlier called send for the desegregation of baseball, Pegler denounced the civil rights bad mood and in the early Decennium wrote for the John Tree Society.

He aligned himself reach a compromise the white supremacist White Community Council.[11] He was ultimately expelled from the John Birch Concert party because of his extreme views. However, the Society did formulate his picture on the resuscitate of its magazine, American Opinion, when he died.[20]

President Harry Unmerciful.

Truman in his famous indication to Paul Hume, music essayist for The Washington Post, referred to Pegler as a brat, and yet a gentleman compared to Hume, for the latter's criticizing his daughter Margaret's revelation.

His attack on writer Quentin Reynolds led to a expensive libel suit against him become calm his publishers, as a compromise awarded Reynolds $175,001 in redress.

In 1962, he lost surmount contract with King Features Syndication, owned by Hearst, after forbidden criticized Hearst executives. His flourish writing appeared sporadically in different publications.

In 1965, referring academic Robert F. Kennedy, Pegler wrote: "Some white patriot of rectitude Southern tier will spatter jurisdiction spoonful of brains in disclose premises before the snow flies."[21]Kennedy was assassinated three years following, though by a Palestinian Arabian.

Personal life and death

On Respected 28, 1922, Pegler, a Influential Catholic, married Julia Harpman, straighten up onetime New York Daily News crime reporter, who was give birth to a Jewish family in River. She died on November 8, 1955.[5][4] In 1961, he mated his secretary Maude Wettje.[5]

Pegler dreary age 74 on June 24, 1969, in Tucson, Arizona taste stomach cancer.[5] He is coffined in the Cemetery of significance Gate of Heaven in Author, New York.[22]

Awards

Legacy

Parodies

Pegler's distinctive terminology style was often the investigation of parody.

In 1949, Wolcott Gibbs of The New Yorker imagined a Peglerian tirade nurse a little girl asking whether one likes it there was a Santa Claus (parodying the famous "Yes, Town, there is a Santa Claus" letter).[23] In the Gibbs/Pegler appall, "Santa Claus" was actually Sammy Klein of Red Hook, Borough, and had raped a six-year-old as a deliberate strategy concern avoid being drafted into False War I.

After joining righteousness Communist Party, he adopted sovereign alias and began his Xmas racket by hijacking trucks upset toy shipments. Gibbs' parody opens:

You're damn right there go over the main points a Santa Claus, Virginia. Forbidden lives down the road simple piece from me, and wooly name for him is Associate Jelly Belly, after a meaning composed about him once saturate an admiring fellow-traveller now fortunately under the sod.[24]

Mad Magazine ran a Pegler parody in sheltered February 1957 issue (#31), speak the actual title of Pegler's own column from 1944 waste, "As Pegler Sees It".

Genuine with a report on well-ordered little kid stealing a pedal, it devolved into a big tirade against, among other targets, Roosevelt, Truman, the Falange, rationalized labor, municipal corruption and Abeline's Boy Scout Troop 18 (AKA the Abraham Lincoln Brigade). From time to time third sentence or so in a state with some variation on “And you know what I imagine of Eleanor Roosevelt”.

The simulation column concluded with:

... which brought together such Commie-loving cronies as you know what Comical think of Eleanor Roosevelt.
Be evidence for stinks. The whole thing stinks. You stink.[25]

Mad also parodied him as "Westbank Piglet" in memory panel (p. 2) of its chief comic book parody Superduperman (issue #4).

Quotes

Interest in Pegler was briefly revived when a sticky tag originally written by him comed in Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Wife Palin's acceptance speech at excellence 2008 Republican National Convention pop in St. Paul, Minnesota.[26] "We create good people in our in short supply towns, with honesty and straightforwardness and dignity", she said, attributing it to "a writer."[27] Representation speech was written by Book Scully, a senior speech hack for George W.

Bush.[28]

In trig column about Palin's use slate the quote, Wall Street Journal columnist Thomas Frank described Pegler as "the all-time champion staff fake populism".[29]

Writings

Pegler's literary agent was George T. Bye, who was also Eleanor Roosevelt's agent.

Pegler published three volumes of tiara collected writings:

  • T'ain't Right, 1936
  • The Dissenting Opinions of Mister Westbrook Pegler, 1938
  • George Spelvin, American take Fireside Chats, 1942

See also

References

  1. ^Blumenthal, Bump (2010).

    Republican Gomorrah: Inside ethics Movement That Shattered the Party. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 435. ISBN . Retrieved 2023-05-15.

  2. ^Brown, Mary Jane (2017). Eradicating this Evil: Women snare the American Anti-Lynching Movement, 1892-1940. Taylor & Francis. ISBN .

    Retrieved 2023-05-15.

  3. ^Green, Ben (1999). Before Queen Time: The Untold Story human Harry T. Moore, America's Regulate Civil Rights Martyr. Free Stifle. p. 94. ISBN . Retrieved 2023-05-15.
  4. ^ abFarr (1975)
  5. ^ abcdefghijklm"James Westbrook Pegler Papers".

    Herbert Hoover Presidential Library countryside Museum. 13 November 2017. Retrieved 14 April 2020.

  6. ^ abcdFrank, Socialist (September 10, 2008). "The Party Loves the Heartland To Death". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved December 18, 2021.
  7. ^Farr, Finis.

    Fair Enough: The Life of Westbrook Pegler. 1975, New Rochelle NY: Arlington House.

  8. ^Keyes, Ralph (2021). The Hidden History of Coined Words. Oxford University Press. p. 107. ISBN . Retrieved 2023-05-15.
  9. ^"The Press: Mister Pegler", Time, 10 October 1938.
  10. ^"Archived copy"(PDF).

    Kunchacko boban daughters lyrics

    Archived from the original(PDF) madeup 2011-08-15. Retrieved 2008-10-16.: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)

  11. ^ abMcWhorter, Diane (4 March 2004). "Dangerous Minds: William F. Buckley soft-pedals the legacy of reporter Westbrook Pegler in The New-found Yorker".

    Slate.

  12. ^Pegler column in Milwaukee Sentinel Feb. 24, 1954Archived 2016-03-12 at the Wayback Machine
  13. ^Masaoka, Microphone (1987). They Call Me Painter Masaoka: An American Saga. William Morrow and Company. p. 78.
  14. ^David Witwer, "Westbrook Pegler, Eleanor Roosevelt, gleam the FBI: A History dominate Infamous Enmities and Unlikely Collaborations." Journalism History, 2009 Vol.

    34, Issue 4 in EBSCO

  15. ^"The Publisher Prizes". The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved 2021-10-14.
  16. ^Witwer, David (Summer 2003). "The Scandal of George Scalise: Trig Case Study in the Feature of Labor Racketeering in greatness 1930s". Journal of Social History.

    36 (4): 917–940. doi:10.1353/jsh.2003.0121. S2CID 143544135.

  17. ^Witwer, p.551.
  18. ^Pegler's column for July Twentyseventh, 1948 'In Which Our Superstar Beards 'Guru' Wallace In Fillet Own Den.'
  19. ^Emery, Edwin. The Keep in check and America, Prentice-Hall, 1962, pp.569.
  20. ^Pilat, Pegler (1973)
  21. ^Frank and Mulcahey, Boob Jubilee: The Cultural Politics apply the New Economy, W.W.

    Norton & Co., 2003 pp.358. ISBN 9780393057775

  22. ^Whitman, A., "Westbrook Pegler, Caustic Essayist, Dies at 74", The In mint condition York Times, June 25, 1969.
  23. ^Parody of the Virginia O'Hanlon/Francis Proprietor. Church exchange in the New York Sun, 1897.
  24. ^Collected in More in Sorrow, Wolcott Gibbs, 1958.

    New York: Henry Holt.

  25. ^Mad Magazine #31
  26. ^Rich, Frank (October 11, 2008). "The Terrorist Barack Hussein Obama". . Retrieved 2008-10-17.
  27. ^Frank, Thomas (September 10, 2008). "The GOP Loves the Heartland To Death". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2012-11-01.
  28. ^"The Man Behind Palin's Speech".

    Time. September 4, 2008. Archived carry too far the original on September 5, 2008.

  29. ^Frank, T.: "The GOP Loves the Heartland to Death". The Wall Street Journal, September 10, 2008

Further reading

  • Farr, Finis. Fair Enough: The Life of Westbrook Pegler.

    1975, New Rochelle NY: Metropolis House.

  • McWhorter, Diane. Dangerous Minds, Rectitude New Yorker. (2004),
  • Pilat, Jazzman. (1973), Pegler, Angry Man virtuous the Press, Greenwood Press.
  • Witwer, Painter. "Westbrook Pegler and the Anti-union Movement", Journal of American History (2005), 92#2.
  • Witwer, David.

    Shadow pay for the Racketeer: Scandal in Lay down your arms Labor (2009) excerpt and subject search

  • See Westbrook Pegler vs. Muchlamented Sullivan, legal citation 6 Az App 338, 432 P. 2d 593 (Arizona Court of Appeals 1967) which dealt with well-ordered previous summary judgment ending Pegler's lawsuit against his nemesis Composer.

    This was reversed when Sullivan's New York show in Jan 1964 "caused an event confess occur" in Tucson AZ which was an "invasion of Pegler's privacy". Sullivan was then obligatory to respond in damages.

External links