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Fair Enough
By Westbrook Pegler
Mrs. Roosevelt's Public Life
For all the gentle sweetness of my nature and my prose, I have been accused of rudeness to Mrs. Roosevelt when I only said she was impudent, presumptuous and conspiratorial, and that her withdrawal from public life at this time would be a fine public service.
 That is just an opinion, and there may be other opinions on the subject, but I maintain that it is expressed in chaste and gentlemanly language and with no more vigor than most of us are used to in our discussion of controversial subjects.
This lady is a meddler in many matters which are very improper business for the wife of the President of the United States, a status which is constantly invoked for her lest her activities be objectively discussed as those of an ordinary citizen.
Long ago Mrs. Roosevelt meddled in the Newspaper Guild, which was a Communist organization. Absolutely ineligible even on the pretext of her public diary, which is not her principal occupation, Mrs. Roosevelt nevertheless accepted membership to which she was not entitled and immediately became the political foe of all those American newspapermen and women who knew the character of the Guild, detested and resisted the dirty work of tireless Muscovites and bravely suffered its heartless persecutions.
She was granted membership because she was the President's wife and for no other reason, which meant that the Communists wanted to make use of her position. Thus the victims of the plot could not but feel the highest office in their own country, the Presidency, was permitted to be used against them in the interests of men and women whose mission was not to improve the lot of reporters but to establish the Soviet system of government here, and they were absolutely right.
Legally Mrs. Roosevelt, even as the wife of the president, has no more authority than any other citizen of the Republic. She is on a common footing with Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Jones and Mrs. George Spelvin, but we always treat our Madame President with a special respect because the office of her husband, which she partakes of, is the highest temporal authority in our country. But when our first lady commercializes that respect for profit and in competition with the rest of the people by her association with persons who associate with enemies of the American system, antagonizes the people, it is she, not her critics, who fails in respect for the office.
Mrs. Roosevelt's quiet salting around of her personal friends in the Government employ is no new thing. The Dies Committee has known of this for a long time, and has muttered about it, but the Dies Committee lives under a political sword and has had to speak softly lest Mrs. Roosevelt exert her influence to starve it of money with which to continue its work. Mrs. Roosevelt has openly used her office against this committee of the United States Congress.
Mrs. Roosevelt has absolutely no right to appoint anyone to any public position, but now it comes out that she has named one actor, one eurythmicist, or dancer, and one secretary from her private payroll to paid jobs in the Office of Civilian Defense, and one professional youth-mugg to an unpaid position in the same important department. The youth, incidentally, formerly was a fair haired boy of the Communist Front, married a young campus cutie who has been infected with the Moscow principles and celebrated her marriage with a piece in a Muscovite paper, entitled "My Father was a Liar" was divorced, and now, at the age of 32, is held up to the American people by Mrs. Roosevelt as a person fit for leadership of American youth. He, also, is on Mrs. Roosevelt's private payroll, the money for which is derived from the commercialization of the Presidential office.
One day in London, during the last war, one of the tabloids came out with a shocking scandal, exposing the fact that "petticoat government" had been established in Whitehall, and especially in the war office, whereby certain favorites of an influential lady were planted in safe and cushy jobs in Blighty. Winston Churchill would remember it well, for the lady was a relative of his. The British reacted calmly, the lady's ears were slapped down and Britain got into the war.
Still scrupulously avoiding impoliteness, I insist that Mrs. Roosevelt's activities have been not helpful but, on the whole, very harmful, that she has been guilty of imposition and effrontery that, for all her pleadings against discrimination for creed and color, has herself actively encouraged cruel discrimination against Americans refusing to join unions wherefore she should retire.
The Washington Post February 12, 1942
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