Who were the Coulters/Limbaughs et al. of previous eras?

[John_DiFool]

[you can also include your most-disliked liberal pundits too, in case you were wondering]

My question basically boils down to: were there rabid commentators of the Anne/
Rush mold in prior political eras? Was there someone ranting from the right in the
1930’s, declaring FDR to be the Antichrist and all New Deal Democrats to be the
Spawn of Satan? [replace with “Hoover” and “Republicans” if you want to talk about
1929-1932]

If so who were the (ahem) leading lights? If not is this a sign of how low political
discourse has come since then, that you can’t give your opponent credit and aren’t
willing any longer to debate him on fair terms?

[Evil_Joe]

Klu Klux Clan?

[Roboto]

McCarthy? He seemed like a first-rate asshole.

[According_to_Pliny]

Hearst had a string of firebrands to start the Spanish American War.

[Chronos]

Would Tacitus and Pliny count? Political mudslinging goes way back.

[Kimstu]

I think the notorious “Radio Priest”, Father Charles Coughlin, might fit your bill:

He was an early supporter of Roosevelt’s New Deal reforms, and coined the phrase “Roosevelt or ruin,” which was famous during the early days of the FDR administration. However, Coughlin’s focus changed during the 1930s as he preached more and more about the negative influence of “international bankers” and of Wall Street on the general welfare and about the need for monetary reform. […]

By 1934 Coughlin was perhaps the most prominent Catholic spokesman on political and financial issues, with a radio audience that reached millions every week. When he began criticizing the New Deal, Roosevelt sent Joseph P. Kennedy and Frank Murphy, prominent Irish Catholics, to try to tone him down. Ignoring them, Coughlin began denouncing Roosevelt as a tool of Wall Street. He supported Huey Long until Long was assassinated in 1935, and then supported William Lemke’s third party in 1936. Thus, as Coughlin became a bitter opponent of the New Deal, his radio talks escalated in vehemence against Roosevelt, capitalists and Jewish conspirators. […]

After 1936, however, Coughlin increasingly expressed sympathy for the fascist policies of Hitler and Mussolini, as an antidote to Bolshevism, though this was before World War II began. His CBS radio broadcasts also became overtly antisemitic. He blamed the Depression on an “international conspiracy of Jewish bankers”, and also claimed that Jewish bankers were behind the Russian Revolution. […]

On Nov. 20, 1938, two weeks after Kristallnacht, when Jews across Germany were attacked and killed, and Jewish businesses, homes and synagogues burned, Coughlin blamed the Jewish victims, saying that “Jewish persecution only followed after Christians first were persecuted.” After this speech, and as his programs became more anti-Semitic, some radio stations, including those in New York and Chicago, began refusing to air his speeches without pre-approved scripts; in New York, his programs were cancelled by WINS and WMCA, leaving Coughlin to broadcasting on the Newark part-time station WHBI. This made Coughlin a hero in Nazi Germany, where papers ran headlines like “America is Not Allowed to Hear the Truth.” On December 18, 1938 two thousand of Coughlin’s followers marched in New York protesting potential asylum law changes that would allow more Jews (including refugees from Hitler’s oppression) into the US, chanting, “Send Jews back where they came from in leaky boats!” and “Wait until Hitler comes over here!”

[Slithy_Tove]

…

[Larry_Borgia]

Charles Coughlin was a fairly nasty man. He was pretty anti-semitic, which isn’t cool anymore.

[ElvisL1ves]

Walter Winchell, though primarily a gossip spreader, comes pretty close, too.

He generally had a left-of-center political view through the 1930s and World War II, when he was stridently pro-Roosevelt, pro-labor, and pro–Democratic Party. Following the war, he perceived Communism as the main threat facing America and, in a few short years, he became allied with the right wing of American politics. He frequently attacked politicians he did not like by implying in his commentaries that they were Communist sympathizers.

In the 1950s, Winchell supported Senator Joseph McCarthy, and as McCarthy’s “Red Scare” tactics became more extreme and unbelievable, Winchell lost credibility along with McCarthy.

[Kimstu]

[hijack] I just re-read my posted excerpt from that link, and I realized that one thing’s puzzling me:

@Wiki on Father Coughlin

On December 18, 1938 two thousand of Coughlin’s followers marched in New York protesting potential asylum law changes that would allow more Jews (including refugees from Hitler’s oppression) into the US, chanting, “Send Jews back where they came from in leaky boats!”

“Chanting”? Can anybody come up with a workable way to chant that quoted sentence (not that I have any intention of chanting it, natch)? It sounds completely non-rhythmic and unchantable, AFAICT.

[/hijack]

[Paul_in_Qatar]

In addition to the other political commentators of the prewar era, Will Rogers comes to mind.

[ElvisL1ves]

@Kimstu

Can anybody come up with a workable way to chant that quoted sentence

SEND Jews BACK where they CAME FROM (pause) IN leaky BOATS!

But at least it didn’t start “Hey Hey, Ho Ho”.

[Evil_Joe]

They didn’t say chanting in unison. It probably just sounded like rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb…

[mobo85]

I was thinking of Father Coughlin. I saw footage of him once, and he was gesturing and acting similarly to Hitler.

Would Charles Lindbergh count? I know he was a notorious pro-Nazi during the war era.

[R.P.McMurphy]

Rush Limpdick and Ann Coldcrotch have nothing on Joe Pyne:

Joe Pyne - Wiki

[Jeff_Lichtman]

@Paul in Saudi

In addition to the other political commentators of the prewar era, Will Rogers comes to mind.

Eh? Rogers was a political humorist, but his material and delivery were fairly gentle. He famously said he never met a man he didn’t like. This doesn’t sound to me like Coulter or Limbaugh. Why do you consider Rogers in the same category as these two?

[SmackFu]

I found one source from 1943 that gave it as “Send them back in leaky boats!”, which is a little easier to chant (in one sense of the word easy).

[RealityChuck]

There always were charged political columnists in American newspapers, and Colter and Limbaugh are positively genteel compared to some of them.

The political cartoonists, though, really put the ax to those they hated. There’s no one similar working today: political cartoons tend toward the humorous, and the cartoonists have not strong agenda other than to attack anyone who can be attacked at all. One day they’ll attack Bush; the next day, Hillary; the next day, Rush Limbaugh; the next day another prominent Democrat.

Consider Thomas Nast. He’s an American hero for bringing down the Tweed Ring, for inventing the Democratic donkey and Republican elephant, and for inventing the modern image of Santa Claus. But people forget he was a vitriolic and partisan Republican, who attacked the Democratic Party much like Rush does (if Tweed had been a Republican, Nast probably wouldn’t have gone after him with such glee).

Dr. Seuss even did a bunch of hard-hitting political cartoons in the early 40s, but there was a war on. His disdain for Japan and Germany, for those not supporting the war effort was palpable.

On the written front, there was Finlay Peter Dunne’s Mr. Dooley columns. Dunne was a humorist, but had a real biting edge, especially when the Spanish-American War started.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

Will Rogers?

The real ancestor to today’s ickmeisters was Westbrook Pegler, whose slime-ridden reputation is defended by the same forces that allow today’s Limbaughs and Coulters to fluorish.

William F. Buckley soft-pedals the legacy of journalist Westbrook Pegler in The New Yorker.

Since Buckley floats a defense of Pegler while burying the charges against him, let us be clear about who this man was and what he represented. Pegler’s career took off in 1933 when he became a nationally syndicated columnist with Scripps-Howard, roared along under the Hearst family, and ended 30 years later under the auspices of a twitchy sect of neo-Nazis and professional racists from the White Citizens Council and the Rev. Billy James Hargis’ truly reptilian Christian Crusade. At his peak in the 1930s and 1940s, Pegler was a leading popularizer of one of the most concerted antidemocratic crusades in this country’s history: the vicious backlash against the New Deal and the labor movement to which it gave legal protection. This anti-Roosevelt front included the country’s major industrialists, anti-Semitic, red-baiting pamphleteers, Congressman Martin Dies’ Committee on Un-American Activities, and an assortment of Depression-era demagogues (and men on horseback who conspired with Hitler’s agents in this country).

Although Pegler did not turn against Roosevelt until the president’s second term, he quickly became a shrill cheerleader for the right’s campaign to paint the New Deal’s democratic advances as an internationalist Communist plot. Pegler compared union advocates of the closed shop to Hitler’s “goose-steppers.” (In his view, the greatest threat to the country was the corrupt labor boss; his exposé of a union official’s mob connections earned him a Pulitzer in 1941.) By the 1950s, however, Pegler was showing some nostalgia for the Third Reich. His proposal for “smashing” the AF of L and the CIO was for the state to take them over. “Yes, that would be fascism,” he wrote. “But I, who detest fascism, see advantages in such fascism.”

And that’s just a fraction of the article.

[desdinova]

@Jeff Lichtman

Eh? Rogers was a political humorist, but his material and delivery were fairly gentle. He famously said he never met a man he didn’t like. This doesn’t sound to me like Coulter or Limbaugh. Why do you consider Rogers in the same category as these two?

I’m not seeing it either. Will Rogers was extraordinarily popular, and not the least bit divisive or controversial as best as I know. I don’t think either Coulter or Limbaugh are going to be honored with a statue in the capitol building.