OPINIONSrnA Labor of Haternby Justin Raimondorn”The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on a level with thernman who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife.”rn—Theodore RooseveltrnThe Colonel: The Life and Legend ofrnRobert R. McCormick, 1880-1955rnby Richard Norton SmithrnNew York: Houghton Mifflin Co.;rn597 pp., $35.00rnHailed by the New York Times forrnshowing that Colonel Robert Mc-rnCormick, the legendary publisher of thernChicago Tribune, was “anti- just aboutrneverything, a man defined far morerndeeply by his loathings than by hisrnloves,” Richard Norton Smith’s bookrnis a massive attempt to smear, insult,rnridicule, and ultimately vilify a manrnwho, more than any other single figure,rnrepresents the Old Right in Americanrnpolitics. The Times’ reviewer citesrnSmith’s comment that “McCormickrnJustin Raimondo is a senior fellow at thernCenter for Libertarian Studies and thernauthor of Reclaiming the AmericanrnRight: The Lost Legacy of the ConservativernMovement.rnneeded enemies, it seemed, the wayrnmost men need friends.” But what doesrnwriting a 600-page book about a man hernso obviously despises say about Smith’srnown need for hate? The author remarksrnin his prologue that “during Mc-rnCormick’s lifetime, profiles of him generallyrnfell into two categories: rancorousrnand condescending.” His own bookrnmanages to combine the two.rnThe paucity of biographical materialrnon McCormick is perhaps due to thernprevious unavailabilii- of his personalrnpapers, which are in the possession of thernRobert R. McCormick-Tribune Foundation,rnwhich inherited the bulk of thernColonel’s estate. Unhl Smith’s volume,rnthere had been only two book-length biographiesrnof this towering figure who —rneven his enemies admit—was a giant of arnman. hnagine an attempt to marr’ thernliterary technique oiFinnegan’s Wake tornthe requirements of biography, and yournhave Frank Waldrop’s McCormick ofrnChicago: An Unconventional Portrait of arnControversial Figure (1966), where anyrnattempt to extract real informahon fromrnthe murk is problemahc, at best. On anrnentirely different level. The Colonel ofrnChicago by Joseph Cies (1979) is a treasure-rntrove of information written in arnclear, objective style; while not alwaysrnagreeing with the Colonel’s politics,rnCies fairly presents the facts. The resultrnis a book chock-full of the Colonel’s ownrnwords, and generous quotes from Tribunerneditorials.rnSmith denies us this pleasure: hisrnbook inundates us with authorial opinions,rninterpretations, and outrageous ps-rnchologizing. For all the author’s pretensionsrnto evenhandedness, the result is notrna portrait, but a caricature. The Colonel,rnSmith tells us, was “regarded by millionsrnof admirers as an ardent patriot and arnfearless, if lonely, dissenter from the collectivistrnanthill. Slackjawed detractorsrnviewed him with equal fervor as a prototypicalrnreactionary whose defamatoryrnskills endangered the very freedom of expressionrnto which he devoted his life.rnBoth camps were right yet neitherrngrasped the complexities of this life-longrnmaverick cum pillar of the establish-rn26/CHRONICLESrnrnrn