Hearst v. Smith

To the inhabitants of New York City, ''Diamond LiP' means only one thing and that is a smart, scheming, successful harlot. Mae West, buxom actress, is chiefly responsible for making this meaning a household word. Her play, Diamond Lil, in which she performs the leading role of a dive-keeper's mistress, has been a smash-hit on Broadway since early spring.

The Democratic Party, as exemplified by its Presidential Nominee Alfred Emanuel Smith, has been christened "Diamond Lil" by the New York American (Hearst daily). A series of political cartoons/- depicts her as part donkey, part woman, with big pearls around her neck, with tight-fitting, scanty black dress. She usually goes riding in an automobile with a tiger flunky and a chauffeur labelled RASKOB. Some days ago, Diamond Lil had an accident, an explosion caused by the Maine election. Her automobile was blown to smithereens. The story beneath the cartoon told how:

"Diamond Lil, transmogrified** Democratic donkey, thanks Providence that she didn't lose her pearls, although she did lose the Maine election.

"She declines to talk for publication beyond the statement, 'That was no way to treat a lady,' and 'Thank heaven, the jug wasn't broken.'

"Mr. Raskob, Diamond Lil's new chauffeur, also declined to be interviewed. Nurses at the hospital, where he lay for awhile unconscious, say that he repeated over and over, 'Take me back to General Motors,' whatever he may have meant by that."

Thus, the Hearst "whispering campaign" -whispers which shout, cartoons which anybody can understand -implying that Mr. Smith's Democratic Party is the party of notorious women, jugs of liquor, money for profane pearls, with Mr. Raskob as chief sugar-daddy.

Mr. Hearst has a good memory. He knows that Mr. Smith once killed his political ambitions in New York State. The Hearst press has made similar attacks on the Smith integrity before now and Governor Smith once flayed Publisher Hearst as follows: "He has not got a drop of good, clean, pure, red blood in his whole body. And I know the 'color of his liver, and it is whiter, if that could be, than the driven snow. . . . That fellow nearly murdered my mother. . . . Foul, dirty pen . . . slimy ink. . . . Greatest living enemy of the people whose cause he pretends to espouse. . . ."

/- These cartoons are the work of two Hearst aces: Arthur Brisbane furnishes the ideas; T. E. ("Ton") Powers does the drawing. Some of the cartoons show ''Diamond Lil" leading a little animal, part dog, part man, labeled GLOOM.

**A word, of humorous coinage, meaning changed to a different shape.