Read Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking for Free Online

Forest Lawn Memorial Park announced they were preparing suit “against the authoress and her publishers,” but regrettably no such suits have thus far been brought; I should have enjoyed defending against them. I cannot, however, lay the failure of these libel suits to materialize at the door of the publisher’s libel lawyers. I take the blame upon myself for being quite careful to check facts—tedious yet necessary, if one’s work is to have any standing and value for the reader.
    RESULTS? Finally we should explore the question, Does muckraking really accomplish anything, or does it at best lead to reforms that merely gloss over the basic flaws of society? Lincoln Steffens, originator of the genre and author of the pioneering Shame of the Cities , eventually came to take a dim view. “He was now certain that muckraking in itself had run its course and led to no solutions,” writes Justin Kaplan, Steffens’s biographer. “Muckraking, it seemed, had only been a way of shouting at society, and this was pointless, especially now that one had to shout louder and louder to get people to listen, much less to do something.”
    What of today’s muckrakers? Ralph Nader is probably the leader in exposing misdeeds of the giant corporations. At least his loud shouts have succeeded in creating a nationwide awareness of consumer fraud, ranging from unsafe cars to dangerous and overpriced prescription drugs, thus educating a whole generation of consumers as to their rights, and to the possibilities of organizing and fighting back through the courts and legislatures.
    My own efforts have been (with the possible exception of The Trial of Dr. Spock and Kind and Usual Punishment ) on a far less consequential scale. The undertakers are, after all, hardly on a par with such formidable Nader adversaries as General Motors or the puissant drug industry. Most of the subjects of investigation in this collection are odd pockets of American enterprise that happened to strike my fancy (or, as the OED would say, appealed to my “depraved interest in what is morally unsavoury or scandalous”): Elizabeth Arden’s retreat for rich fat women; the Famous Writers’ correspondence school; the Sign of the Dove, a high-priced New York tourist trap. I wish I could point to some overriding social purpose in these articles; the sad truth is that the best I can say for them is that I got pleasure from mocking these enterprises and the individuals who profit from them.
    On the political front, it seems clear that over the last decade young and energetic muckrakers succeeded in laying the groundwork for the toppling of two presidents. Robert Scheer’s early pamphlet “ How We Got Involved in Vietnam ,” originally published in an obscure journal, became the text for innumerable teach-ins and source material for scores of subsequent books and articles. These in turn were immensely influential in fanning the anti-Vietnam War protest which led to the downfall of L.B.J. Similarly the Woodward-Bernstein exposures initiated the chain of events that brought down Nixon. In each case the written word lit the fire and fed the flames.
    But then (you will groan) we had Ford and now Carter, there have been no fundamental changes or improvements in any aspect of American life. Which merely points up the need for a new generation of muckrakers who will hone and perfect the craft, and will shout long and loud enough to get people not only to listen but to do something.
    * He was wrong, of course; under California law medical records are the property of the patient, and if you have the written consent of the patient, medical and hospital files must be made available for copying.

TRIAL BY HEADLINE
    NATION / October 26, 1957
Our fathers claimed, by obvious madness moved,
Man’s innocent until his guilt is proved.
They would have known, had they not been confused,
He’s innocent until he is accused.
Ogden Nash,
You Can’t Get There From Here
    In varying type sizes, San