Word: pearsons
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...eminent scourge of Washington. Security precautions in many offices are being tightened because no one knows where he will strike next. Nationwide, he is a household name. Now the most celebrated practitioner of the muckraking tradition, Anderson has conquered the shadow of his late employer and friend, Drew Pearson...
...column is a mishmash with an uneven history. After Pearson's death in 1969, the heir suffered dry periods in which his output was only soso. Not even Jack Anderson can find an interesting piece of skulduggery every day. So he relates, in tones of breathless outrage, such gossip as a 1970 bit about the then mayor of Tucson, James Corbett Jr., allegedly barging uninvited into a young woman's Washington hotel room and biting her knee (Corbett lost the subsequent election). Anderson also polices the drinking habits of Capitol Hill (he is an abstemious Mormon) and waxes...
Though obviously a creature of the muckraking philosophy, Anderson is in a class by himself. Unlike the ideologues who write for small or specialized publications, he has a mass audience; 746 newspapers now buy his column, an increase of more than 100 since Pearson's last days and a gain of 46 just since early January. Unlike the reporters who work for large individual magazines or newspapers, he controls his own budget and has no editor or publisher to second-guess his judgment. He can devote as many columns to one subject as he chooses, has another outlet...
Anderson and his wife Olivia ("Livvy") are big on togetherness. Aside from running the household, she is on his payroll at $15,000 a year as a bookkeeper. They watch TV and go to an occasional movie and are decidedly unfashionable. Pearson lived in Georgetown, the Andersons are in Bethesda, Md. Although Pearson was heartily disliked by many in Washington, he was a sought-after catch for the more important hostesses. The Andersons are on no one's In guest list and candidly do not care. Anderson will never be modish, though now, at 49, he dresses spiffily...
...that is somehow fitting. A man with Anderson's kind of mission should be a loner vis-a-vis all sorts of authority. The church-and Pearson-are probably the only yokes he has willingly borne since he left home. He grew up in Salt Lake City, the son of a postal worker; his mother once drove a taxicab to subsidize young Jack's missionary travels for the church. At the age of twelve he was a newspaper employee, reporting on Boy Scout affairs, and in high school he was student-body president. Once he tried...