The Wilmington morning star., 1946-05-16
Fair Enough
By wEsTBRoOK PEGLER

What l keep wanting to know IS why we
can't have a play for the movies and the
stage and a big, loud hit, too, that will
dramatic some of the material on the left
side of our political geography.
Being a laggard patron of the play in New
York, largely because the theatres ar so
shabby and downright dirty, l haven't seen
State of the Union" but I did read the syn
opsis and the reviews and gathered that this
was a big ear of corn in which a group
of economic royalists almost seduce an honest
fool to become their candidate for president
under obligations to them. At the l a S t
minute he sees through it all and, like Nellie
the beautiful ~cloak-model, Bertha the sewing
machine girl, and all the rest of the Blaney
and Davis h%eroines, filings the baubles in their
faces and brings down the house with his
dictum that rags are royal raiment when
worn for virtues sake.
The original version Of this scenario occurs
in the Bible, on a mountain, and it runs all
through Heratio Alger and 1 dare say that if
the candidate had received a comparable pro-
position from something like the political ac-
ton committee, presented by a couple of &C
tors resembling Sidney Hillman and Eleanor
Roosevelt and had chased them out of the
house, that would have been somehow incred-
IDLE and inappropriate, but let some business
men try to reach an understanding with a
potential candidate and they become republi-
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oldest ano most hackneyed of plots acquires
Educational Value"
Do we have to wait so years for research
playwrights to go burrowing in the Congress
sional library and come up with a costume
show portraying the smoke-filled rooms in
which the shake-down gangsters Of the union
rackets decide to appropriate money without
limit to elect candidates from top to bottom
who will promise in advance to do exactly
&C fhev 6iract and vote against every prOpOs31
to limit their predatory power?
The republicans have been out FOR Is years,
counting the period when Herbert Hoover was
president without power, and Tom Dewey, a
republican,, is the best governor in the country
today and so far superior to Harry Truman
and Henry Wallace that the opposition is
afraid to discuss anything but his moustache,
his height and his teeth. ALI the successful
iniquities in politics and public office now are
democratic II only because the democrats
have grown careless, over-confident and fat
headed which Is not the only reason, either.
Still, all this inviting dramatic lumber, we'll
seasoned and 50 plentiful that an author can
pick and choose with the most e~xacting taste
for absolute fidelity to fact, is not merely
neglected but Stunned as hot cargo.
I say that If the stage and movies mean
to be "educational' and feel that they have
a mission and a message they are not just
careless or negligent but guilty In their I'M
erring aversion to situations which, year by
year, have been allowed to slide into ret
respect.
Never one to criticize without proposing a
remedy, l gladly offer a scenario to start
the reaction.
We begin with a revoltingly rich, useless
and self-indulgent loafer of middle-age who is
not quite well mentally, and no wonder, con-
sidering his family background including an
idle and VIGOROUSLY dissolute father. He hasn't
the intelligence to realize that he is a fascist
but, thanks to his environment, he has a fear
of the lower classes.
He consults a phrenologist whit can't be-
lieve his senses when the sucker walks in
waving 4 blank check, to have his head felt
and his Jumps interpreted. The phrenologist
tells him the best thing he can do for his
kind IS to string along with the communists
and make them So obnoxious and alarming
that here, as in other countries, the patridic
temper and smack them down. When that
happens, our hero will suddenly unmask and
reveal to the nation that all this was a de-
liberate plot of his from the beginning. To
prove it, he will go to a vault that was
sealed with a ten-year time-lock when he STAN
ed his enterprises, and bring forth a stamped,
dated prospectus of his intention that was
witnessed and filled away for this purpose of
vindication the day before he started spend
ing his millions in this campaign.
In the course Of this long and subtle pro-
gram to instill in the patriots a hatred of the
communists, and exasperate them to violence,
our play will show our hero in ostensible
collaboration with the nastiest vermin that he
can recruit in the political underworld of New
York, Washington and Hollywood. He acquires
radio stations, publications, theatres and
movie dios-doze OF outlets. His whole
motive i'll all his broadcasts, books, maya
zines and plays is to identify Jews with COM
munism, which he does by throwing into
prominence a few selected communists with
Jewish names and stimulating them to mock
and deride every decent belief, tradition and
institution of the American people. And insult
the best citizens with disgusting lies.
Hate, hate, hate is his theme while he rails
against hate and, by way of noting progress,
we will show him and the phrenologist laugh
ing over the rising indications of Impotence,
fear and anger which may be seen in public
speeches and the growth OF small, i~ncipient
fascist clubs cropping their way together.
In areas where Christians and Jews have
always worked, played and lived as friends
together, our hero will send out communists
at night to paint the, swastika on the syna-
gogues. His broadcasters then will how that
these places are Nazi hotbeds, throwing old
friends into a turmoil of mutual suspicion and
something like h~yste-ia.
In the end we see him on a high balcony
with a silly tassel Hopping over his demented
eyes, his left thumb jabbed in his belt, his
right hand raised in the old salute.
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