Saber-tongued Harold Ickes went to work last week at a trade he had often reviled. Hanging out his shingle as a syndicated columnist (97 U.S. newspapers), the old Curmudgeon festooned it with promises: to tell no lies, to pull no punches, to abstain ("unless compelled by events") from promoting a third party. "I have stipulated," Harold Ickes warned all & sundry, "that I may neither be expurgated nor amended."
Ninety-seven editors let the warning pass, knowing full well that he could be expurgated like anybody else, if he broke the laws of libel or good taste. But red-haired Paul C. Smith, the...
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