HEARST, EXAMINED Engrossing biography underscores the media baron's fascinating contradictions "Starting out as a crusader for the interests of the working man against the entrenched power of 'the Trusts,' Hearst later morphed into one of the nation's leading reactionaries when FDR's New Deal threatened to undermine his own fortune. "Hearst used all the considerable tools at his disposal to prepare his countrymen to invade and annex Mexico, where the revolution jeopardized extensive Hearst properties -- a fact the publisher instructed his editors not to mention. Decades earlier he had written, 'I really don't see what is to prevent us from owning all Mexico and running it to suit ourselves.' "{The author] devotes an entire chapter to 'Hearst and Hitler.' [Hearst's newspapers ran] syndicated columns by Hitler] as well as Goering, Mussolini and other leading fascists, while editorially upholding the right of Germany to rearm itself and insisting on American neutrality in Europe ... " "THE CHIEF: The Life of William Randolph Hearst" By David Nasaw -- Houghton Mifflin; 656 pages; $35 REVIEWED BY Gray Brechin San Francisco Chronicle "Book Review," July 2, 2000 Call him the ultimate control freak. Call him spoiled rotten, a dangerous radical, a fascist, awesomely powerful, a loser, a patriot, a traitor, the leading debaucher of journalism, a connoisseur, a magpie or simply the world's most spectacular spendthrift. William Randolph Hearst has been called all of these and many more, and he was most of them during his long and tumultuous life. No fewer than 10 biographies have been published on the man, and others on the Hearst dynasty, while more are in the works. Hearst fascinates endlessly, and so does David Nasaw's new biography, "The Chief," which, as with the best that came before it, reads like a novel. Given the subject, it could hardly do otherwise, because Hearst cut a broad wake through the better part of a century. No one but W.R. himself could make up such a character. Nasaw's biography will likely replace W.A. Swanberg's "Citizen Hearst" as the definitive Hearst biography and hot seller at the San Simeon gift shop. A professor of history at City College of New York, Nasaw gained access to Hearst papers never before seen by researchers and, with the aid of graduate students and other assistants, amalgamated an immense amount of material into a highly readable portrait of a fascinating individual. Those familiar with the Hearst saga will find little new in the broad outlines. The pampered only child of one of the West's canniest mining promoters and his wife, a demanding mother who was as culturally voracious as she was splendidly philanthropic, William leveraged the family fortune into what was once the world's greatest multimedia conglomerate. Starting out as a crusader for the interests of the working man and the immigrant with the San Francisco Examiner, rallying against the entrenched power of "the Trusts," Hearst later morphed into one of the nation's leading reactionaries when FDR's New Deal threatened to undermine his own fortune. He built palaces and raided Europe of art and entire monasteries. His motivations baffled many and provided the basis for Orson Welles' masterpiece, "Citizen Kane." Joan Didion admired the audacity with which he crowned a California mountaintop with a fairy-tale castle, all so that his guests could admire from its terraces the miles of coastline that he claimed as his birthright. Hearst's initial sincerity as a privileged crusader for the rights of the downtrodden has always constituted a major part of the mystery. Did he experience a political conversion late in life, or did he simply remove a mask he wore while younger? Without directly saying so, Nasaw strongly suggests the latter. Hearst's letters to his parents reveal a precociously conniving young man avid for ever more wealth and for the power he knew it could purchase to make him richer still. In 1889 he wrote his mother after a buying spree in Europe that his "artistic longings are not altogether distinct from avarice," while he advised his father that large newspaper illustrations were necessary to "stimulate the imagination of the lower classes ... and thus are of particular importance to that class of people which the Examiner claims to address." Hearst knew that he would need the votes of "that class of people" if he was ever to reach the White House. He had no doubt that he was qualified to run the country (and possibly the world) in the same way he micromanaged his newspapers and movies. Doubt, of any sort, appears to have been alien to Hearst's makeup. "The allied newspaper, publications, and news services controlled and directed by Mr. Hearst KNOW the sentiments and feelings and opinions of the American people, day by day, as no one else knows them," proclaimed Hearst's editorial pages in January 1916. Nasaw comments that "Hearst saw his role to be that of a clairvoyant, bringing to the surface, pre-articulating, and giving voice to an often inchoate and unorganized public opinion." At that time, Hearst was using all the considerable tools at his disposal to prepare his countrymen to invade and annex Mexico, where the ongoing revolution jeopardized extensive Hearst properties -- a fact that the publisher instructed his editors not to mention. Decades earlier he had written his father that "I really don't see what is to prevent us from owning all Mexico and running it to suit ourselves." In his own mind, the interests of the United States and the Hearst estate were identical. That Hearst felt born to rule and qualified to "KNOW" his nation's collective mind suggests another leader who was no slouch at public relations, one for whom Hearst at times expressed his admiration. Nasaw devotes an entire chapter to "Hearst and Hitler." The former had, after all, syndicated columns by the latter, as well as by Goering, Mussolini and other leading fascists, all while editorially upholding the right of Germany to rearm itself and insisting on American neutrality in Europe until the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Critics such as investigative journalist George Seldes claimed that Hearst had sold his International News Service to the German propaganda ministry for a $400,000 annual consideration after the Fuhrer invited the publisher to a private interview in 1934. Nasaw dismisses the charge with a single sentence, claiming "(t)he story was without foundation and on its face ludicrous, as Hearst needed no financial assistance to support Hitler." But, as Nasaw elsewhere makes clear, $400,000 would have come in very handy indeed, for Hearst's infinite appetite was driving his conglomerate into a deepening sea of red ink as the Depression dragged on. His obsessive shopping and building could only be maintained through an elaborate shell game of bank loans and public stock offerings promoted by his newspapers. Hearst had to keep spending to maintain the popular illusion that he was immune to the marketplace. In 1937 the House of Hearst nearly collapsed; a receiver saved the Chief by liquidating much of his empire, culminating in a humiliating jumble sale of antiques and tchotchkes at Gimbel's Department Store. Though Nasaw is skilled at providing context for Hearst's rise as media baron, he fails to see Hearst's apparent sympathy for fascism as not extraordinary to his class. Whether regarding fascism as a regrettable bulwark against communism or as a positive alternative to the messiness of democracy and trade unionism, leading Americans of Hearst's class often admired what Hitler, Mussolini and Franco were doing to impose order on their unruly citizens in time of economic crisis. "Perhaps the only way to restrain anyone in an hysterical frenzy (of communism) is in a strait jacket until he recovers his sanity," Hearst wrote privately from Germany in 1934. Nasaw correctly notes that Hearst pioneered what giant conglomerates now call "synergy," the use of their media divisions to hype the value of other property or products within or allied to the corporation, such as weapons contractors. According to media critic Ben Bagdikian, all branches of mass media in the United States are now dominated by only six diversified companies, in a process of concentration which the 1996 Federal Telecommunications Act only accelerated. Few know who owns those companies, and that is not accidental, for as Nasaw concludes, Hearst's style of journalism was ultimately too personal for his own good: "Hearst, unlike his colleagues in publishing, had not learned that in mass circulation journalism it was best to disguise one's political opinions ... to cultivate the appearance of objectivity." By both positive and negative example, the Chief taught well those who have followed him. [Gray Brechin is a historical geographer and author of "Farewell, Promised Land: Waking From the California Dream" and "Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin."]
