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Westbrook Pegler

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Francis James Westbrook Pegler
Pen nameWestbrook Pegler
OccupationAuthor
Journalist
Nationality United States
SpouseJulia Harpman Pegler

Francis James Westbrook Pegler (August 2, 1894 – June 24, 1969)[1] was an American journalist and writer. Known early in his career as a fierce opponent of both fascism and communism, he was later attacked as fascist, pro-Nazi, and antisemitic. Pegler, a Roman Catholic, was married to Julia Harpman Pegler, a onetime New York Daily News crime reporter who came from a Jewish family in Tennessee.[2]

Biography

Pegler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota on August 2, 1894. His father, Arthur James Pegler, was an editor for a local newspaper. While working for United Press, Pegler was the youngest American war correspondent during World War I. [citation needed]

Early career

After the war, Pegler started off as a sports columnist, but later wrote general interest articles. In 1925 he moved to the Chicago Tribune. In 1933 he moved to the Scripps Howard syndicate, where he worked closely with his friend Roy Howard. In 1942 he was named one of the nation's "best adult columnists." His columns went out six days a week to 174 newspapers that reached about 10 million subscribers. He moved his syndicated column to the Hearst syndicate in 1944.

Contempt for Franklin Roosevelt

He initially supported President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but after seeing the rise of fascism in Europe he warned against the dangers of dictatorship in America. He was one of the Roosevelt administration's sharpest critics over what he saw as its abuse of power. He rarely missed an opportunity to criticize Roosevelt, his wife Eleanor Roosevelt, or Vice President Henry A. Wallace. Pegler was accused of openly wishing for the assassination of FDR. The New York Times stated, in his obituary, that Pegler lamented that Giuseppe Zangara, a would-be assassin of FDR's who missed and killed the mayor of Chicago instead, "hit the wrong man" when gunning for Franklin Roosevelt.[3] His views, generally in colorful language, became more conservative. Pegler was outraged by the New Deal's support for labor unions which he considered morally and politically corrupt.

Opposition to the New Deal

At his peak in the 1930s and 1940s, Pegler was a leading figure in the movement against the New Deal and the labor unions which it supported-such as the National Maritime Union. This anti-Roosevelt front included many of the country's major industrialists, the Chicago Tribune, Jeffersonian Democrats such as Al Smith and John W. Davis and Congressman Martin Dies, chairman of the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

Pegler portrayed the New Deal as an internationalist Communist plot. Pegler compared union advocates of the closed shop to Hitler's "goose-steppers." In his view, the greatest threat to the country was the corrupt labor boss. By the 1950s, Pegler was showing some nostalgia for fascism.[citation needed] His proposal for "smashing" the AFL and CIO was for the state to take them over. "Yes, that would be fascism," he wrote. "But I, who detest fascism, see advantages in such fascism."[citation needed]

The headstone of Westbrook Pegler in Gate of Heaven Cemetery

Pulitzer Prize and activism

In 1941 Pegler became the first columnist to win a Pulitzer Prize for reporting, for his work in exposing racketeering in Hollywood labor unions, focusing on the criminal career of William Morris Bioff which led to the conviction of George Scalise. [4] As historian David Witwer has concluded, "He depicted a world where a conspiracy of criminals, corrupt union officials, Communists, and their political allies in the New Deal threatened the economic freedom of working Americans." [Witwer 551]. The National Maritime Union sued Hearst and the Associated Press for an article by Pegler, settled out of court for $10, 000. [5]

Controversy and problems in later career

In the 1950s and 1960s, as his conservative views became more extreme and his writing increasingly shrill, he earned the tag of "the stuck whistle of journalism."[6] He denounced the civil rights movement, embraced antisemitism, and in the early 1960s wrote for the John Birch Society, until he was invited to leave because of his extreme views.

Pegler criticized every president from Herbert Hoover to John F. Kennedy. He also criticized the Supreme Court, the tax system, and labor unions. His attack on writer Quentin Reynolds led to a costly libel suit against him and his publishers, as a jury awarded Reynolds $175, 000 in damages. In 1962, he lost his contract with King Features Syndicate, owned by Hearst, after he criticized Hearst executives. His late writing appeared sporadically in various publications, including the John Birch Society's American Opinion.

In 1965, referring to Robert F. Kennedy, Pegler wrote: "Some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow flies." [7]

Death

Pegler died of stomach cancer in Tucson, Arizona and is interred in the Cemetery of the Gate of Heaven in Hawthorne, New York.[8]

Parodied

Pegler's distinctive writing style was often the subject of parody. Wolcott Gibbs of The New Yorker once imagined a Peglerian tirade to a little girl asking whether there was a Santa Claus (parodying the famous "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" article).[9] In the Gibbs/Pegler version, "Santa Claus" was one of several aliases used by an old Bolshevik with a history of union racketeering. "Yes, Virginia, you bet there's a Santa Claus. He is Comrade Jelly Belly."[10]

Mad Magazine once ran an article in which Pegler was parodied in a mock column titled "As Pegler Sees It." The mock column ended with "... which brought together such Commie-loving cronies as you-know-what-I-think-of-Eleanor-Roosevelt.

It stinks. The whole thing stinks. You stink."

This last one-line paragraph is often cited as a real Pegler quote.

Legacy

Interest in Pegler was revived when a line originally written by him appeared in Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin's acceptance speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota.[11] "We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity", she said, attributing it to "a writer."[12] The speech was written by Matthew Scully, a senior speech writer for George W. Bush.[13]

Writings

Pegler published three volumes of his collected writings:

  • The Dissenting Opinions of Mr. Westbrook Pegler
  • T'ain't Right
  • George Spelvin, American and Fireside Chats

References

  1. ^ "Westbrook Pegler". Rootsweb. Retrieved 2008-10-12.
  2. ^ Finis Farr, Fair Enough: The Life of Westbrook Pegler. 1975, New Rochelle NY: Arlington House.
  3. ^ http://www.wsj.com/article/SB122100226859616967.html?mod=hpp_us_inside_today
  4. ^ http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat/Reporting
  5. ^ http://etd.lib.fsu.edu/theses/available/etd-04122008-211559/unrestricted/WaberAThesis.pdf | pages 31
  6. ^ The Press and America, Edwin Emery, Prentice-Hall, 1962 pages 569
  7. ^ Frank and Mulcahey, Boob Jubilee: The Cultural Politics of the New Economy, W.W. Norton & Co., 2003 pages 358 ISBN 978039057775
  8. ^ "Westbrook Pegler, Columnist, 74, Dies; Westbrook Pegler, Caustic Columnist, Dies at 74". New York Times. June 25, 1969. Retrieved 2008-10-12. Westbrook Pegler, the former newspaper columnist who was known for his caustic attacks on public figures and who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1941 for his exposes of labor union corruption, died here today at the age of 74. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  9. ^ Parody of the Virginia O'Hanlon/Francis P. Church exchange in the New York Sun, 1897.
  10. ^ Collected in More in Sorrow, Wolcott Gibbs, 1958. New York: Henry Holt.
  11. ^ Rich, Frank (October 11, 2008). "The Terrorist Barack Hussein Obama". NYTimes.com. Retrieved 2008-10-17.
  12. ^ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122100226859616967.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
  13. ^ http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1838808,00.html

Further reading

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