Books in Brief: Minnesota Rag

Minnesota Rag, by Fred W. Friendly (Random House, 243 pp., $12.95). The title sounds like something from Scott Joplin’s æuvre, but this book is neither rhythmic nor entertaining. Rather, it details the legal travail of Jay Near, a muckraking journalist of questionable character. In 1927, his weekly newspaper The Saturday Press, a scandal sheet replete with rumors, invective, and vicious antisemitism, was shut down by the courts after just nine issues. The judgment brought the Chicago Tribune’s colorful publisher, Colonel Robert R. McCormick, to the rescue. He reasoned that if Near’s sleazy “rag” could be snuffed out by judicial prior restraint, then no newspaper was safe. Thus the Colonel decided to finance his fellow publisher’s trek through the appellate process. In 1931 the U.S. Supreme Court finally found in Near’s favor. And though the plaintiff faded into oblivion, the legal precedent became the basis, forty years later, for the publication of the Pentagon Papers by the New York Times and the Washington Post. This may sound like high drama, but the book is a disappointment. Mr. Friendly’s wide focus overwhelms his small text. But the real drawback is the author’s shrillness. Given his penchant for juxtaposing the “reactionary” court members and the egomaniacal Colonel McCormick with the enlightened nobility of Justices Hughes, Holmes, and Brandeis, his title for the book should perhaps have been The Good Guys, the Bad Guys, and the First Amendment— Part II.