Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking Read online

  JESSICA MITFORD (1917–1996) was the daughter of Lord and Lady Redesdale, and she and her five sisters and one brother grew up in isolation on their parents’ Cotswold estate. Rebelling against her family’s hidebound conservatism, Mitford became an outspoken socialist and, with her second cousin and husband-to-be Esmond Romilly, ran away to fight against Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Romilly was killed in World War II, and Mitford moved to America, where she married the lawyer and political activist Robert Treuhaft. A brilliant muckraking journalist, Mitford was the author of, among other works, a memoir of her youth, Hons and Rebels (also published as an NYRB Classic); a study of the funeral industry, The American Way of Death; and Kind and Usual Punishment: The Prison Business. She died at the age of seventy-eight while working on a follow-up to The American Way of Death, for which, with characteristic humor, she proposed the title “Death Warmed Over.”

  JANE SMILEY, winner of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, is the author of many novels and other works. In 2010 she published Private Life, a novel; A Good Horse, a book for young adults; and The Man Who Invented the Computer, the first volume of the Sloane American Inventors series.

  POISON PENMANSHIP

  The Gentle Art of Muckraking

  JESSICA MITFORD

  Preface by

  JANE SMILEY

  NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS

  New York

  CONTENTS

  Biographical Notes

  Title Page

  Preface

  POISON PENMANSHIP

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Trial by Headline

  St. Peter, Don’t You Call Me

  Proceed with Caution

  You-All and Non-You-All

  Americans Don’t Want Fancy Funerals

  My Way of Life Since The American Way of Death

  “Something to Offend Everyone”

  Don’t Call It Syphilis

  Maine Chance Diary

  Let Us Now Appraise Famous Writers

  A Talk with George Jackson

  My Short and Happy Life as a Distinguished Professor

  The Best of Frenemies

  Checks and Balances at the Sign of the Dove

  The Dove Strikes Back

  Waiting for O’Hara

  Egyptomania

  Copyright and More Information

  PREFACE

  If there is a more forthright, good-natured, and witty American investigative journalist than Jessica Mitford, I don’t know who it would be. In the course of a career that spanned almost forty years, Mitford wrote eleven books (including a volume of letters collected after her death). Carl Bernstein, in an afterword to an earier edition of Poison Penmanship, calls her “an amateur,” but she was hardly inexperienced as either a reader or a writer, as her many hilarious and insightful letters show. In fact, she was self-educated, like the great majority of women writers once were (including Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf)—haphazardly but effectively.

  Poison Penmanship is conceived not only as a collection of occasional pieces but, since Mitford enjoyed the teaching posts she held once she had established herself as a journalist, also as a how-to book for aspiring muckrakers. The lengthy introduction describes how she got started writing and gives tips—how to gather background information, how to interview (meaning how to get antagonistic interviewees to betray themselves), how to find information not available to the general public, how to recognize a blind alley, and how to organize and write the article. She also discusses potential consequences of a career in muckraking. In the section labeled “Libel,” she writes, “I have often been asked whether I have been sued for libel in the course of my writing career. The answer is no, alas.” Mitford was careful to check her facts.

  Mitford unabashedly wrote for money, and part of her charm in this volume is in the afterword to each piece, in which she describes how she came to the subject and what the challenges were—the challenges of writing about a silly upscale spa seem to have been greater than the challenges of writing about a surge in the rate of syphilis infection among teenagers of the 1960s and the refusal of NBC to air two fairly anodyne but explicit episodes of popular programs on the subject, even though the government begged the network to do so (“Not in the best interests of the viewing public,” said the network). Mitford’s specific argument evolves into a condemnation of the bland commerciality of network TV. One wonders what she would have made of Jon and Kate Plus Eight or Fear Factor.

  Above all things, Mitford liked a worthy opponent, and her weapons of choice were factual accuracy and a tone of amazement. Perhaps the best piece in here is “Let Us Now Praise Famous Writers,” in which she reveals the anatomy of the scam that was the Famous Writers School, a correspondence course that was advertised through magazines then sold through coercive follow-up visits by “representatives.” The advertising materials promised personal attention to a student’s manuscripts by such literary luminaries as the head of Random House, Bennett Cerf, as well as popular writers, all of whom lent their names to the advertising campaign and invested in the school, although none engaged with the “students.” In this piece, Miss Mitford is a bit less amused, and the result was suitable embarrassment all around.

  With her customary honesty, Mitford raises the question of whether muckraking journalism is effective or not at changing the world for the better. She mentions Lincoln Steffens (who eventually decided that it wasn’t) and Ralph Nader (who is still at it), as well as Robert Scheer (then young, who is also still at it). She is honest about the immediate results of her own exposés—some worked better than others. From our vantage point in a time when muck is being raked (and flung) vehemently and constantly twenty-four hours a day, the question of effectiveness is overwhelmed by the question of whether any person in America with access to the media remains shockable or persuadable. In this regard, Mitford was a toiler in the muck who cared about facts and believed in the idea that her fellow citizens were generally honest and expected the same of business and government. She might have been daunted by the way that lies and spin have taken over our public discourse. But given her habit, in Poison Penmanship, of being thrilled by a good fight, I doubt it.

  —JANE SMILEY

  POISON PENMANSHIP

  To

  Rita Wiggins and Marge Frantz

  with deep gratitude

  for their inestimable help

  INTRODUCTION

  In his essay “Stop the Press, I Want to Get On,” Nicholas Tomalin, a talented and versatile English journalist, wrote: “The only qualities essential for real success in journalism are ratlike cunning, a plausible manner, and a little literary ability.” He added, “The capacity to steal other people’s ideas and phrases—that one about ratlike cunning was invented by my colleague Murray Sayre —is also invaluable.”

  In this collection I have tried to reconstruct my own efforts, over a twenty-year period, to acquire these qualities and to demonstrate, through one person’s experience, the development of investigative techniques. In the comment accompanying each piece or group of pieces, I have sought to convey something of the story-behind-the-story: how I stumbled onto the particular subject; the joys and sorrows of research, the lucky breaks and mistakes, things overlooked through sheer ineptitude for which one could kick oneself; difficulties of getting published; and in some cases the afterglow of satisfaction (how the Famous Writers went bankrupt) or the aftermath of dissatisfaction (see comment on “My Short and Happy Life as a Distinguished Professor”). And now, thinking it all over, I would say there are two important omissions from Tomalin’s otherwise excellent list of essential qualitie
s: plodding determination, and an appetite for tracking and destroying the enemy.

  As even muckrakers take an occasional day off for other pursuits, I have sneaked in some pieces that do not belong to this category because they illustrate some of the problems encountered in preparing articles for publication: “The Best of Frenemies,” “Proceed with Caution,” and “Egyptomania.”

  I first began to think of myself as a muckraker when Time, commenting in its press section on the Famous Writers School Fracas (see page 148), called me “Queen of the Muckrakers.” I rushed to the dictionary to find out what I was queen of, and discovered that “muckraker” was originally a pejorative coined by President Theodore Roosevelt to describe journalists like Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell, who in his view had gone too far in exposing corruption in government and corporate enterprise. Thus the Oxford English Dictionary says “muckrake ... is often made to refer generally ... to a depraved interest in what is morally ‘unsavoury’ or scandalous.” (I fear that does rather describe me.) In the OED supplement of 1933, “muckraker” has come up in the world a little bit and is now defined as “one who seeks out and publishes scandals and the like about prominent people.” And by 1950 additional respectability is conferred by Webster’s New International Dictionary, defining “muckrake” as “To seek for, expose, or charge, esp. habitually, corruption, real or alleged, on the part of public men and corporations.”

  As a consequence of my Time-bestowed sovereignty, I was invited to teach a course in muckraking at San Jose State University, and later at Yale. These were workshop sessions in which my students undertook actual investigations of “corruption real or alleged” in their college or community. Together we explored techniques of research, how to conduct interviews, how to put the results together in readable form. Some of our findings:

  CHOICE OF SUBJECT is of cardinal importance, as one does by far one’s best work when besotted by and absorbed in the matter at hand. After the publication of The American Way of Death (a study of the funeral industry), I got hundreds of letters suggesting other infamous rackets that should be investigated and exposed. I discerned a pattern to these letters—all from rightly disgruntled victims—and began to file them by categories. Surprisingly, complaints about hearing aids led the field. These cheaply mass produced, inefficient little gadgets, sold at extortionate prices to desperate people, are doubtless a source of unconscionable profits to a predatory industry and of hardship to countless buyers; but somehow, although there may well be need for such an exposé, I could not warm up to hearing aids as a subject for the kind of thorough, intensive, long-range research that would be needed to do an effective job.

  In my Yale class, each student (or group of students if they preferred to work in teams) chose his or her own subject to investigate. Those who tackled hot issues on campus, such as violations of academic freedom, or failure to implement affirmative-action hiring policies, turned in some excellent work; but the lad who decided to investigate “waste in the Yale dining halls” was predictably unable to make much of this trivial topic.

  GATHERING BACKGROUND INFORMATION. The goal is to know, if possible, more about your subject than the target of the investigation does. To this end, I soak up books and articles on the subject, type out relevant passages, and accumulate a store of knowledge before seeking an interview with said target.

  Obvious reference sources are the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature, The New York Times Index, and back copies of news weeklies, all easily available in any library. Harder to come by are small provincial newspapers which may be a prime source for the light they shed on local issues not covered by wire services or major metropolitan dailies. These can often be had on microfilm through the inter-library loan system. I learned about this invaluable service from a library school student who was helping with the research for A Fine Old Conflict, memoirs of my subversive life during the McCarthy era. I was writing a chapter about the case of Willie McGee, a black man falsely accused of rape in Mississippi, which had received only perfunctory attention in The New York Times and the news weeklies. The student procured the Jackson, Mississippi, Daily News for a three-month period in 1951, the only charge a fee for postage. This newspaper, its blood-thirsty coverage of McGee’s execution, its virulent editorials echoing the authentic voice of the Ku Klux Klan, re-created as nothing else could the violent and pervasive racism in the deep South of those days.

  PICKING OTHER PEOPLE’S BRAINS is an art worth cultivating. Frequently an investigation will lead you into some specialized field with which you are unfamiliar. This is the time to consult an expert, assuming you can find one who is sufficiently interested in you or your subject to give advice gratis. Rather than trying to unravel some tricky point of law yourself, ask a lawyer. If you need to understand corporate records, get an accountant to help. Technical literature in most fields is written (no doubt deliberately) so as to be unintelligible to the layman, and there is grave danger that in trying to decipher it without expert help you will make some ghastly mistakes upon which the professionals will gleefully leap once your piece is published.

  I have found experts to be amazingly generous with their time—they actually seem to like the chance to expound their knowledge to us ignorami, although I recall one rather disappointing experience: wanting to know what 6 percent of a million is, I called the Department of Higher Mathematics at the University of California. The person who answered said, “Oh, it’s six hundred. No, it’s six thousand ... no, wait a minute, I think it’s sixty thousand. Could you call back after lunch?” I have long since forgotten the definitive, post-lunch answer. But thereafter I relied on a thirteen-year-old friend in junior high school, who knows such things off the top of his head.

  Medical jargon is particularly confusing. I remember a horrifying moment in my doctor’s office when the doctor was called out of the room and I took a surreptitious peek at my file. “Head: Negative,” he had written. When he returned I confronted him with this unkind diagnosis. He said stiffly that it was not as bad as I supposed and that in the future I should refrain from reading my file which was confidential and for his use only. *

  For a chapter in Kind and Usual Punishment: The Prison Business, I was exploring the use of convict populations by the giant drug companies as subjects for experimental research, and happened upon a copy of the California Department of Corrections’ Annual Research Review in which some thirty medical experiments are summarized in brief paragraphs. To me, these read like pure gibberish, so I sought out Dr. Sheldon Margen, chairman of the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of California. He proved to be not only a good translator but excellent copy, exploding with fury as he examined the Review: “God, that kills me!” “Wow!”

  A sample Margen translation: the study of “Cleocin HFC levels,” for which “10 healthy normal volunteers” were selected, to “determine antibiotic levels in various tissues and/or fluids.” Each subject gets “150 mg. of Cleocin q.i.d.” following which he will be relieved of “sebum, 2–4 ml.; sweat, 4–5 ml.; semen, amount of normal ejaculation; and muscle tissue, 1 gm....” As Dr. Margen put it: “Here’s what happens to these ten guys. First they make them masturbate to collect semen. Then they cut into the arm or go through the flesh to get the gram of muscle tissue. That’s the horrific part; this procedure is cockeyed, it would never be approved for student-subjects.” Had I tried to puzzle this out myself, with the aid of a medical dictionary and scholarly articles on the subject, it might have taken me weeks and I should never have had the benefit of Dr. Margen’s graphic comments.

  TRADE MAGAZINES. I cannot overemphasize the pleasure and profit to be derived from reading trade journals and house organs in the field of your investigation. It is important, however, to distinguish between publications intended for public consumption and those that are “eyes only,” privately circulated to the trade. For example, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and the American Bar Association Journal are well-repute
d, widely known organs of their respective professions, their contents often the basis of press releases and news stories about medical advances or new legal breakthroughs. There is little muck to be raked in these journals, as they serve essentially a public relations purpose for their sponsors, projecting them as conscientious, upright professionals whose only concern is patient/client welfare.

  If you were going after doctors, a more rewarding starting point would be Medical Economics, a publication that most laymen have never heard of but that is delivered free to every member of the A.M.A. In its glossy pages you will find many a crass and wonderfully quotable appeal to the avarice of the practitioners of the healing arts. Lawyers? Try such in-house publications as the American Trial Lawyers Association Journal, in which the nation’s top ambulance chasers exchange tips on how it is done. If you are, like most of us, a patient or a client, you will get many a bitter laugh out of these, as the whole point of the articles and editorials is how to diddle you out of more money.

  The public posture of undertakers can readily be ascertained by reading their ads in the metropolitan dailies, generally on the obituary page, stressing dignity, refinement, professional competence, sincerity. Ah, but their private face! When preparing The American Way of Death, I first began to appreciate the enormous value of trade publications. “Without whom this book could never have been written,” as authors are wont to say in dedications, is certainly true of Casket & Sunnyside, Mortuary Management, and —my favorite title—Concept: The Journal of Creative Ideas for Cemeteries. Here were undertakers and “cemeterians” talking to each other, in the secure belief that no prying outsider would ever have access to their inner councils.

  But how to lay hands on such magazines? They are not to be found in public or university libraries, and must be obtained by subscription. Although a simple request, accompanied by a check, may bring results (for these publishers are, like others, interested in expanding their circulation), you cannot always count on it. Paranoia tends to reign in some of these circles, a pervasive fear of the word getting out via a nosy journalist. You may have to spend much time and effort cajoling fringe types—backsliders in your field of investigation who are sympathetic to your viewpoint—to supply the coveted publications.