American muckraker Sinclair's integrity challenged
By Arthur Spiegelman Thu Jan 26, 9:07 AM ET
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - He was a man for whom the term muckraker was coined, a crusading journalist and novelist who never hesitated to expose scandal at the highest levels of government and business.
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But now the integrity of Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Upton Sinclair is being questioned 38 years after his death because of the discovery of a letter he wrote in 1929.
Quotes from the letter in recent news reports make it seem that the man who exposed the horrors of the meat-packing industry in the 1906 book "The Jungle" covered up a confession from a defense lawyer that famous anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were guilty of the murders for which they were executed. Many people thought the two were innocent and prosecuted for political reasons.
But Sinclair's defenders say key quotes from the letter exonerating him from that charge were ignored and that instead of covering up his doubts about the case, he devoted a whole novel to them, "Boston." They say he is being smeared 38 years after his death.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060126/en_nm/arts_sinclair_dcMore conservative bullshit against history. They revile every American liberal from Lincoln, to Upton, to FDR, with the exception of maybe the Founding Fathers. Seeing as how I owe the second half of my screen name to Upton Sinclair, I also see another reason to defend him from this libel.