Political epithets, accustomed as they are to being taken with a counter-epithet or with a laugh, seldom provoke a libel suit. When a senator or a mayor calls a man a stool pigeon, a snooper, a boodler, a buffoon, a scoundrel, a scalawag or a person weaned on a pickle, he apparently considers himself safe from libel proceedings. And, in legislative chambers, he is. But in a mayor's chair he is not.
As everyone knows, Mayor William Hale Thompson of Chicago called Superintendent of Schools William McAndrew "a stool pigeon of King George" and other defaming phrases, both before and after...