Westbrook pegler biography

What kind of times do we live in when syndicated radio host G. Gordon Liddy can “neutrally” remind listeners to shoot for the head when targeting federal agents? Times pretty similar to the heyday of Westbook Pegler, the It Boy of attack journalists, now a tragic and largely forgotten figure. “The angry man of the press,” as he was known in his midcentury prime, Pegler was one of the most widely read newspaper columnists in the country. From the Depression through the Cold War, he tilted at suspects familiar to Rush Limbaugh’s fans: foreign subversives, swindling politicians, the First Lady, corrupt union bosses, the elite, the effete, and, of course, homosexuals. For guys like Pegler and Liddy, These Days are always understood to be After the Fall: This used to be a damn good country until “they” made a hash of it.

Pegler wielded his well-sharpened prose like a knife in a street fight. He was the kind of writer who could cheer on a lynch mob (as he actually did in ; he sincerely believed the victims had it coming) or exhort solid citizens to join strikebreakers “in the praiseworthy pastime of batting the brains out of pickets.” In his lighter moods, Pegler refined his homophobic invective on minor targets such as the literary critic Clifton Fadiman &#; “the bull butterfly of the literary teas” &#; and then, more encouraged by the wounds such words inflicted than any particular dislike for homosexuality, he turned his anti-gay guns on bigger game, “outing” Woodrow Wilson and Frank Sinatra. (When Sinatra sought out Pegler to give him a beating, the singer brought Orson Welles as a witness. Pegler made a getaway, but he retaliated in print by praising Welles as a “Dear, roguish boy [whose] whole nature seems to chitter and cheep in the language of the elves.”)

He understood his job as a kind of combat.

Light moods were uncharacteristic of Pegler, though; more often he aimed to maim, even to kill. He channeled hatred so pure that more than one colleague bl

Primary Sources

(1) Westbrook Pegler, The Lynching Story ()

As one member of the rabble, I will admit that I said "Fine, that is swell," when the papers came up that day, telling of the lynching of the two men who killed the young fellow in California, and that I haven't changed my mind yet for all the storm of right-mindedness which has blown up since. I know how storms of right-mindedness are made.

The city editor calls a fellow over and tells him to call up a lot of names on the office right-mindedness list and get about a column of expressions of horror and indignation.

There are various standard lists in all shops. One is the list to be called up when some police captain in Boston bars some dirty book from public sale. This one includes a lot of one-book novelists who will say that the Boston police captain undoubtedly is just an ignorant cop who ought to be out shooting hoodlums.

There is another group to be called up for expressions on the restlessness of modern youth when some drunk guy falls out the window of a penthouse while drunk. There is a feminism list, a nudism list, an is-jazz-music? list, and so forth.

Well, the city editor tells the fellow to get about a column of horror and indignation over the lynching, and he goes into the phone booth and comes out about a half-hour later with a mess of copy-paper all scratched up with chicken-track notes. He has nailed the president of the university, the head of the Bar association, a couple of publicity-crazy judges, the governor, the head man of the local crime committee, and several prominent ladies who go in for right-mindedness and good works in a grim way.

Then the editorial page cartoonist, if there is one, draws a picture of a robust female in a loose wrapper with her head bowed and a broken sword in one hand and an apothecary's scale, with the chains all tangled up, in the other. Or, if there isn't a cartoonist in the house, a drawing drops in b

American journalist and writer

Francis James Westbrook Pegler (August 2, – June 24, ) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning U.S. journalist described as "one of the godfathers of right-wing populism". He was a newspaper columnist popular in the s and s for his opposition to the New Deal, labor unions, and anti-lynching legislation.

As an ardent proponent of States' rights, Pegler criticized a variety of targets whom he saw as extending the reach of the federal government, including Herbert Hoover, FDR ("moosejaw"), Harry Truman ("a thin-lipped hater"), and John F. Kennedy. He also criticized the Supreme Court, the tax system, labor unions, and any federal intervention on the issue of civil rights. In , he lost his contract with King Features Syndicate, owned by the Hearst Corporation, after he started criticizing Hearst executives. His late writing appeared sporadically in publications that included the John Birch Society's American Opinion.

Background

James Westbrook Pegler was born on August 2, , in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the son of Frances A. (Nicholson) and Arthur James Pegler, a local newspaper editor.

Career

Journalism career

Westbrook Pegler was the youngest American war correspondent during World War I, working for United Press Service. In , he joined the United States Navy. In , he became a sports writer for United News (New York).

In , Pegler joined the Chicago Tribune. In , he joined the Scripps Howard syndicate (through ), with his inaugural column opposing the passage o