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artificial framework begin to show through:' Pegler could have written that passage, though he would have done so in the purple prose of alliteration and anger. Unlike the demagogues of today's backlash, who rail against cultural elites even as they lend aid and comfort to Republican revolutionists, Pegier was his own man. He understood that the polities of corruption and power lust, practiced by Democrats and Republicans alike, duIled people to independent thinking, made them susceptible to slogans and contented with "color-press pictures of pretty models in glove-tight swimming suits in the ads." For Pegler's part, that was reason enough to hate the bosses, whoever theywere.
B
Y THE time he was blacklisted, Pegier
had already exiled himself, setting up a private retreat in the desert outside Tucson. From there he cultivated arevolving roster of rich men with far-right views who adopted Pegler for various dubious journalistic endeavors. But not even crackpot rags like the John Birch Society's American Opinion could contain Pegler's obsession: lts editor finally ended the relationship, complaining of the "monotony of Pegler's articles" about the twin demons, Eleanor and Earl (Roosevelt and Warren). His next employer, a conservative business monthly called the Toledo Monitor, begged him to lay off '(1) New Deal & Roosevelts; 2) Kennedys; 3) Jews:' Not long after he lost one ofhis last jobs, his beloved wife died. Although Pegier
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married twice again, from there on out he was alone, and his loneliness made him even meaner. He fought his distant desert neighbors over the howling of their dogs. He brawied in the streets of Tucson. Much of what he wrote was no longer publishable, but he sat in his empty, pure, American landscape pounding out more and more of it, trying to get at the monster he couldn't name. In 1966, when the New York Heraid Tribune, World- Telegram, and JournalAmerican all died, Pegier wrote to Kempton, one of his last friends: "If you have a spare half-hour, please write what happened to our world. Peg." Three years later Pegler died too, without ever realizing what had happened to the once-dazzling cosmos of journalism in which his uncompromising columns had shone. The masters he willingly served (even as he thought he fought them) had killed it. He had helped. Pegler went to his death a true believer in his own virtue, broken and uncomprehending. His life epitomized the conservative backlash of the Cold War-a tragedy made in no small part by real adversity and fear. That grim episode has passed, but the spirit of Pegier has returned as a faux-populist puppet show, with the "common people" reduced to one of Rush's props. When Pegier was busy raging against fat cats and fascists, and holding forth on the unbearable arrogance of power, he hit some nice notes. Those columns still offer an insight for both readers and reporters: the civic virtues ofwell-tuned fury. ~