Word: hechts
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...attractions outweighed the handicaps. The News still has prestige as a sort of "New York Times of the Midwest," largely due to its voluminous, generally excellent foreign coverage. It has a tradition of good writing sprung from such ex-Newsmen as Eugene Field. George Ade, Carl Sandburg, Ben Hecht. And it has a tradition of independence that reaches back to its late great founder, Melville E. Stone. A good man could restore its greatness...
Still frankly wrestling with himself, Ben Hecht declined to join a Dewey com mittee on the grounds that he was a "slightly confused follower of Mr. Roosevelt. My confusion arises out of wonder as to whether I admire Mr. Roosevelt or dislike his enemies...
...Guide for the Bedevilled is written with ample hatred. Author Hecht's love for the Jews is expressed in phobic language suggestive of Nazi Julius Streicher's obscene anti-Jewish paper, Der Stürmer. Hechtic sample: Anti-Semites are "Spiritual harelips, tormented homosexuals, lonely sadists . . . bile peddlers . . . invalids whose . . . bladders drip and whose hearts are a sackful of worms . . . religious zanies who woo God by spitting in His eye . . . mincing and bepimpled, clapper-tongued and swivel-brained . . . lame ducks...
Last fortnight reviewers were hectically disagreeing over Author Hecht's diatribe. Said New York Post Reviewer Marvin Berger: "Welcome back into the lodge, Ben. Let's forgive and forget A Jew in Love." Said New York Times Reviewer John Chamberlain: "[A Guide for the Bedevilled] is a sort of antiSemitism, turned inside...
...Hecht's most controversial novel, A Jew in Love (TIME, Jan. 26, 1931), was roundly denounced as anti-Semitic by many readers...