From A to Z

To 125 students at Carleton College, Northfield, Minn., Executive Editor Gideon Seymour of the Cowles brothers' Minneapolis Star and Tribune (combined circ. 105,332) last week gave his considered opinion on certain columnists. "They are all journalistic racketeers--I mean pitchmen," said Editor Seymour. "They are like the oldtime medicine men. They have to produce a sensation a day."

Then Editor Seymour, whose two papers overflow with columnists (e.g., Drew Pearson, Winchell, Walter Lippmann, Mrs. Roosevelt et al.), got down to cases on Pearson--"vindictive, vicious, a soapboxer. But I'd say that he's a good policeman and digger." Of Westbrook Pegler: "[He] is not in the same class [as Pearson]. Pegler is not performing a service now, though I suppose in the early days of his union muckraking he did."

But Pearson and Pegler had little time for such mere jabs from outsiders last week; they were too busy shouting worse names, kicking and gouging each other and yelling "foul." All this, cried Pearson in aggrieved tones, was due to a fact that Pearson unblushingly made public: Pegler had violated a gentlemen's agreement with Pearson not to call each other names any more. The agreement had been made in 1946, said Pearson, when he withdrew a $25,000 libel suit against Pegler who had called him a "miscalled newscaster specializing in falsehoods."

A few weeks ago Pearson filed a second libel suit after Pegler had called him a "lying blackguard." Last week as part proof of the let's-be-nice agreement, Pearson produced a lamblike 1946 note to him from Roaring Lion Pegler: "Let bygones be bygones . . . That is my sincere desire ... I do not believe our present course, if pursued, would benefit anyone and I do think we might bring unpleasant attention to the newspaper business, which has been very good to both of us. In fact, I think it is wasteful to devote valuable space to personal controversies between columnists."

At that, Pegler exploded into print with a far different version of the 1946 settlement. It was Pearson, he sneeringly charged, who had "begged and pleaded" to be permitted to withdraw his (first) suit without trial. To show that he had not given up one bit of his overworked function of calling names, Pegler printed his own "amended answer" to Pearson's complaint in his second suit. Wrote Pegler: "[Pearson] is a habitual, incorrigible, professional liar, as distinguished from an occasional or accidental liar ... Plaintiff is a liar, faker and blackguard from A to Z."

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