The Press: Calumny

One night last week Secretary of the Interior Harold LeClair Ickes, most vociferous U. S. critic of the U. S. press, rose to tell the New York Newspaper Guild and a radio audience what he thought of “calumnists” (columnists). He prefaced his remarks with one of his own ventures in prosody:

Wouldst know what’s right and what is wrong?

Why birdies sing at break of dawn?

Ask the columnists. . . .

W’ho run the earth and sun and moon?

Just Thompson, Lawrence, Franklin, Broun. . . .

When F. D. R. you want to sock, Page Lippmann, Johnson, Kent or Krock. . . .

Mr. Ickes, who is as tough as anyone in handing out verbal socks, though a little tender on the receiving end, proceeded to tag individual columnists with some typical Ickes’ characterizations. Walter Lippmann “would never even break his wooden sword unless he should trip over it in a minuet.” Dorothy Thompson, “the Cassandra of the columnists*. . . a sincere and earnest lady who is trying to cover too much ground.” Mark Sullivan “would be missed . . . even if the world would still manage nicely without the pontifications that waddle through his worried columns.” Frank R. Kent “delights in cruel jibes and acidulous comment that he will direct at a straw man.” Boake Carter “could enter any intellectual goldfish swallowing contest.” Arthur Krock “sometimes permits himself, without abating a whit of his stately authoritativeness, to ‘hit too closely to the belt.” Heywood Broun “is a genial philosopher who declines to take himself too seriously.” Raymond Clapper “is one of the fairest, most objective and most intelligent of them all. . . . By the way, whatever became of Henry L. Mencken?”

Next, Mr. Ickes got down to the cases of the “snipers and guttersnipers.” Snipers were General Hugh Johnson and Westbrook Pegler. “While Johnson is against only those numerous public officials who are bungling affairs that he could so competently manage, Pegler is against everything and everybody according to his whim.” Chief guttersniper in Mr. Ickes’ category was “Mr. Munchausen,” identified in advance copies of the speech as Paul Mallon, although CBS induced Mr. Ickes not to call names over the air. Several of Columnist Mallon’s items about Mr. Ickes, Mr. Ickes bluntly charged, were lies. On the other hand, Columnists Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen (who heave many a mean brick, but rarely at Mr. Ickes) “write a lively and on the whole interesting column of dependable news and legitimate comment. . . .”

Ickes conclusions on columnists: 1) “As quasi-public figures themselves, it is their duty to be factual and truthful”; 2) “A grave responsibility rests upon publishers and editors to deny the use of their columns to writers who take liberties with the truth.”

As a consequence of his feud with the press, Secretary Ickes has received more personal attention from the press than any other member of the Cabinet. The Secretary of the Interior’s lineage took another bound as a result of his remarks. Next day Columnist Johnson cracked: “The Ick . . . is about as fair as Caiaphas, as objective as a fishwife and as courteous as a hyena. He said in his speech that he wishes I didn’t love him so much. Why, gosh-darn it, I just can’t help loving a man like that.”

*TIME said it first (Feb. 27).