Strange Obsession

In the Atlanta Constitution and 199 other papers, Columnist Westbrook Pegler paid his last respects to Margaret Mitchell, "this great historian and interpreter of a time before her time . . ." Atlantans probably shared his sentiments, but many gagged when Pegler went on to blame her for not realizing that those low-down New Dealers in Washington were as trashy as any damyankees and carpetbaggers of Gone With the Wind.

With something more than his customary charity, Columnist Pegler conceded that this lapse was not all her fault: "In Atlanta, she was ... under the influence of an unwise, emotional apologist, Ralph McGill, the editor of the Atlanta Constitution, an insensate Roosevelt-lover who undoubtedly had swayed many inferior minds . . . and deprived others."

Unemotional Editor McGill ran the Pegler column in its usual space, appended a tolerant editorial note: "We often get a bang out of some of Mr. Pegler's strange obsessions . . . Somehow it was not at all surprising to find him . . . using [Miss Mitchell's] death as a vehicle for rebuking the Roosevelts. We knew [her] well enough to know she made up her own mind . . . Certainly she would not [have been] swayed by the influence of an unwise, emotional Westbrook Pegler, an insensate Roosevelt-hater, whose column [may] have swayed and-deprived inferior minds."

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