The Press: Cat-o'-Nine-Tale

When Tobacco Heiress Doris Duke sued Confidential magazine for $3,000,000 for libel, United Feature Syndicate's Columnist Inez Robb sounded a hearty bravo. Wrote Newshen Robb: "Miss Duke has just struck a blow for liberty, freedom and decency . . . against the most putrid of the so-called 'exposé' magazines now defiling newsstands. Let us hope that . . . the gutter journalists responsible draw a stiff jail or penitentiary sentence. . .

"What is really disturbing," Inez Robb went on, "is the discovery that the [U.S.], despite free public education and a high literacy rate, contains so many morons who will support these gamey magazines. Teenagers are abandoning comic books in favor of this exposé tripe." Instead of suing, Columnist Robb said, Doris Duke should have organized "an old-fashioned vigilante party and horsewhipped the shabby crew responsible for this verbal assault. A cat-o'-nine-tails speaks a powerful language that might even penetrate the elephant hide and conscious of these lice."

Last week Confidential, which now has six libel suits pending against it, slapped a $9,000,000 libel suit on Columnist Robb, the syndicate and the New York World-Telegram and Sim. But Inez Robb was properly unworried. Said she: "I'm eating and sleeping normally."