Westbrook Pegler
| Westbrook Pegler | |
|---|---|
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Pegler in 1938.
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| Born | Francis James Westbrook Pegler August 2, 1894 Minneapolis, Minnesota |
| Died | June 24, 1969 (aged 74) |
| Pen name | Westbrook Pegler |
| Occupation | syndicated newspaper columnist |
| Nationality | American |
| Spouse | Julia Harpman Pegler Maude Wettje Pegler |
Francis James Westbrook Pegler (August 2, 1894 – June 24, 1969) was an American journalist and writer. He was a popular columnist in the 1930s and 1940s famed for his opposition to the New Deal and labor unions. Pegler criticized every president from Herbert Hoover to FDR ("moosejaw") to Harry Truman ("a thin-lipped hater") to John F. Kennedy. He also criticized the Supreme Court, the tax system, and labor unions. In 1962, 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.
Pegler was born August 2, 1894, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the son of Frances A. (Nicholson) and Arthur James Pegler, a local newspaper editor.
Pegler, a Roman Catholic, married Julia Harpman, a onetime New York Daily News crime reporter, who was from a Jewish family in Tennessee. Later he married his secretary Maude Wettje.
Westbrook Pegler was the youngest American war correspondent during World War I, working for United Press. He became a sports columnist after the war but soon wrote general interest articles.
He moved in 1925 to the Chicago Tribune and in 1933 to the Scripps Howard syndicate, where he worked closely with his friend Roy Howard. He built up a large readership for his column 'Mister Pegler' and elicited this observation by Time magazine in its October 10, 1938 issue:
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