The Press: Don’t Push Me Around

Manhattan’s hyperthyroid PM, which is loudly “against people who push other people around,” is itself probably journalism’s No. 1 pusher-arounder. Its Editor Ralph McAllister Ingersoll last week directed a hearty shove at one of his own columnists, Fiorello LaGuardia. Wrote Ingersoll:

“Ex-Mayor LaGuardia said on the air Sunday that he was on Bill O’Dwyer’s side in the transit crisis. He certainly should be—since he’s the fellow who got Bill O’Dwyer into his present fix. … If O’Dwyer gets into trouble, LaGuardia can always quote him another fable or two in PM. Fiorello won’t have to take the rap.”

No man to be pushed with impunity, LaGuardia (who has PM’s promise to print whatever he writes) whirled about and sharply kicked the Ingersoll shin:

“I note my friend, the editor of PM, too, has the publisher’s complex. If anyone differs, the other fellow must be wrong. So he is just another publisher. If he were a couple of feet shorter, he would be like Roy Howard. If he had a couple of million more, he would be like Ogden Reid, and if he had the gout, he would be like [the New York Daily News’s Captain Joe] Patterson, and each of them thinks he is a Joseph Pulitzer. . . .

“Every time he takes a crack, I am going to crack right back.”