Greg Mitchell: Sliming a Famous Muckraker: The Untold Story
A recent Los Angeles Times article, and then a widely-published Jonah Goldberg column, questioned the character of Upton Sinclair, based on the discovery of a 1929 letter about the Sacco and Vanzetti case. One problem: Some facts were overlooked or wrong.
This is the story of a recent Los Angeles Times “scoop” that was error-ridden and misleading and resulted in a hysterical rightwing attack, led by Jonah Goldberg, on a famed author nearly 40 years after his passing.
It all began a little over a month ago, on Dec. 24, with an article in the metro section of the L.A. Times by Orange County reporter Jean O. Pasco, headlined, “Sinclair Letter Turns Out to be Another Expose.” It revealed that a Newport Beach attorney named Paul Hegness had finally gotten around to exploring the contents of a box of dusty old papers sitting in a closet that he had purchased at an Irvine auction for $100.
A letter postmarked Sept. 12, 1929, caught his eye. It was addressed to lawyer John Beardsley. The return address read: Upton Sinclair, Long Beach.
Sinclair, of course, was one of the original muckrakers, a Pulitzer Prize winner, famed author of dozens of novels including “The Jungle”--which sparked overdue reform in the food industry—and a tireless activist. As author of a 600-page book about his nearly-successful 1934 campaign for governor of California, I know a thing or two about the man, one of the most fascinating, if often maddening, figures of the 20th century. I’m even familiar with Beardsley.
So what did the 1929 letter contain that was so interesting that it warranted a 1200-word Los Angeles Times report and the attentions of syndicated columnist Jonah Goldberg?
In it Sinclair informed his lawyer that he had met with Fred Moore, identified by Pasco as attorney for the legendary anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who were executed in 1927 for killing two men during a robbery in Braintree, Mass. Their trial and execution drew worldwide protests, mainly from the left side of the dial. Sinclair would write an epic novel based on the case called “Boston,” one of his best-known and well-regarded books.
Alone in a hotel room with the lawyer, "I begged him to tell me the full truth,” Sinclair wrote in the 1929 letter. Moore “then told me that the men were guilty, and he told me in every detail how he had framed a set of alibis for them.”
The last paragraph of the note read: “This letter is for yourself alone. Stick it away in your safe, and some time in the distant future the world may know the real truth about the matter. I am here trying to make plain my own part in the story.”
The Pasco article strongly suggests that Sinclair was a hypocrite and liar, for he went on choosing to believe that Sacco and Vanzetti were railroaded, wrote a novel mocking the trial, and supposedly never told anyone about the chat with Fred Moore. The article calls Sinclair’s letter a “confession” and later “a confessional.”
Strong stuff. But right after publication, one warning flag appeared: The Times had to run a correction for three fairly small errors in the story. It didn’t take long, however, for conservative writers to jump on the “revelation.”
A California assemblyman named Chuck DeVore declared in Human Events magazine that the Pasco piece “lays bares Sinclair’s true role in promoting left-wing myths in America.” He urged readers to think of this the next time they “see the heirs to this shameful legacy with their banners and bumper stickers trying to break our resolve in the face of evil.”
But leave it to Jonah Goldberg, writing in his syndicated column (and at National Review Online), to tie the Sinclair letter to George Clooney.
Goldberg opened his Jan. 5 column by citing a recent quote from Clooney, in which the actor said he didn’t know any time in history that liberals stood on “the wrong side of social issues.” Now that Goldberg had read the Sinclair story, he was ready to ridicule this notion. ...
[Actually, the facts were different.] ... Pasco describes Moore as “the men’s lawyer” (meaning Sacco and Vanzetti). In fact, when he met with Sinclair, he was their former lawyer—fired over key disputes on how to handle the case. Goldberg repeats this error. Would this make Moore, perhaps, more likely to turn on the men?
Next, the whole Sinclair-Moore conversation is hardly a scoop. It is recounted, for example, in the main Sinclair biography to date, “Upton Sinclair: American Rebel,” by Leon Harris, published in 1975. That book finds Sinclair-- mirroring the newly-found letter-- telling a correspondent precisely what Moore said in that same 1929 meeting. He asks leftwing writer Robert Minor to keep the Moore charges quiet for the time being as he wants to finish his novel and he feared there was a real possibility “that some anarchist might think it is his duty to keep me from finishing the book.”
Now, getting to the real meat of the matter: Last Thursday, a Reuters article by Arthur Spiegelman appeared. He took the trouble to consider Sinclair’s entire letter—which, it turns out, was three pages long, typed. Pasco either didn’t see the whole thing, or looked at it and chose to ignore key parts of it (or her editor deleted it). Spiegelman, also unlike Pasco and Goldberg, explored how Sinclair actually portrayed the Sacco and Vanzetti case in “Boston.” Did he indeed “lie” about what Moore told him, or make proper use of it in a popular novel?
Spiegelman wrote that Goldberg “might have been better served if he had read the entire letter instead of the excerpts printed in the Times.” In a copy of the full letter made available to Reuters, Sinclair explains that soon after he talked to Moore he began to have doubts about him: "I realized certain facts about Fred Moore. I had heard that he was using drugs. I knew that he had parted from the defense committee after the bitterest of quarrels. ... Moore admitted to me that the men themselves had never admitted their guilt to him; and I began to wonder whether his present attitude and conclusions might not be the result of his brooding on his wrongs." ...
Read entire article at Editor & PUblisher
This is the story of a recent Los Angeles Times “scoop” that was error-ridden and misleading and resulted in a hysterical rightwing attack, led by Jonah Goldberg, on a famed author nearly 40 years after his passing.
It all began a little over a month ago, on Dec. 24, with an article in the metro section of the L.A. Times by Orange County reporter Jean O. Pasco, headlined, “Sinclair Letter Turns Out to be Another Expose.” It revealed that a Newport Beach attorney named Paul Hegness had finally gotten around to exploring the contents of a box of dusty old papers sitting in a closet that he had purchased at an Irvine auction for $100.
A letter postmarked Sept. 12, 1929, caught his eye. It was addressed to lawyer John Beardsley. The return address read: Upton Sinclair, Long Beach.
Sinclair, of course, was one of the original muckrakers, a Pulitzer Prize winner, famed author of dozens of novels including “The Jungle”--which sparked overdue reform in the food industry—and a tireless activist. As author of a 600-page book about his nearly-successful 1934 campaign for governor of California, I know a thing or two about the man, one of the most fascinating, if often maddening, figures of the 20th century. I’m even familiar with Beardsley.
So what did the 1929 letter contain that was so interesting that it warranted a 1200-word Los Angeles Times report and the attentions of syndicated columnist Jonah Goldberg?
In it Sinclair informed his lawyer that he had met with Fred Moore, identified by Pasco as attorney for the legendary anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who were executed in 1927 for killing two men during a robbery in Braintree, Mass. Their trial and execution drew worldwide protests, mainly from the left side of the dial. Sinclair would write an epic novel based on the case called “Boston,” one of his best-known and well-regarded books.
Alone in a hotel room with the lawyer, "I begged him to tell me the full truth,” Sinclair wrote in the 1929 letter. Moore “then told me that the men were guilty, and he told me in every detail how he had framed a set of alibis for them.”
The last paragraph of the note read: “This letter is for yourself alone. Stick it away in your safe, and some time in the distant future the world may know the real truth about the matter. I am here trying to make plain my own part in the story.”
The Pasco article strongly suggests that Sinclair was a hypocrite and liar, for he went on choosing to believe that Sacco and Vanzetti were railroaded, wrote a novel mocking the trial, and supposedly never told anyone about the chat with Fred Moore. The article calls Sinclair’s letter a “confession” and later “a confessional.”
Strong stuff. But right after publication, one warning flag appeared: The Times had to run a correction for three fairly small errors in the story. It didn’t take long, however, for conservative writers to jump on the “revelation.”
A California assemblyman named Chuck DeVore declared in Human Events magazine that the Pasco piece “lays bares Sinclair’s true role in promoting left-wing myths in America.” He urged readers to think of this the next time they “see the heirs to this shameful legacy with their banners and bumper stickers trying to break our resolve in the face of evil.”
But leave it to Jonah Goldberg, writing in his syndicated column (and at National Review Online), to tie the Sinclair letter to George Clooney.
Goldberg opened his Jan. 5 column by citing a recent quote from Clooney, in which the actor said he didn’t know any time in history that liberals stood on “the wrong side of social issues.” Now that Goldberg had read the Sinclair story, he was ready to ridicule this notion. ...
[Actually, the facts were different.] ... Pasco describes Moore as “the men’s lawyer” (meaning Sacco and Vanzetti). In fact, when he met with Sinclair, he was their former lawyer—fired over key disputes on how to handle the case. Goldberg repeats this error. Would this make Moore, perhaps, more likely to turn on the men?
Next, the whole Sinclair-Moore conversation is hardly a scoop. It is recounted, for example, in the main Sinclair biography to date, “Upton Sinclair: American Rebel,” by Leon Harris, published in 1975. That book finds Sinclair-- mirroring the newly-found letter-- telling a correspondent precisely what Moore said in that same 1929 meeting. He asks leftwing writer Robert Minor to keep the Moore charges quiet for the time being as he wants to finish his novel and he feared there was a real possibility “that some anarchist might think it is his duty to keep me from finishing the book.”
Now, getting to the real meat of the matter: Last Thursday, a Reuters article by Arthur Spiegelman appeared. He took the trouble to consider Sinclair’s entire letter—which, it turns out, was three pages long, typed. Pasco either didn’t see the whole thing, or looked at it and chose to ignore key parts of it (or her editor deleted it). Spiegelman, also unlike Pasco and Goldberg, explored how Sinclair actually portrayed the Sacco and Vanzetti case in “Boston.” Did he indeed “lie” about what Moore told him, or make proper use of it in a popular novel?
Spiegelman wrote that Goldberg “might have been better served if he had read the entire letter instead of the excerpts printed in the Times.” In a copy of the full letter made available to Reuters, Sinclair explains that soon after he talked to Moore he began to have doubts about him: "I realized certain facts about Fred Moore. I had heard that he was using drugs. I knew that he had parted from the defense committee after the bitterest of quarrels. ... Moore admitted to me that the men themselves had never admitted their guilt to him; and I began to wonder whether his present attitude and conclusions might not be the result of his brooding on his wrongs." ...