December 24: I.F. Stone

I.F. Stone (Isidore Feinstein) was born on this day in Philadelphia in 1907. He worked for the New York Post, the Nation, P.M., and “Meet the Press” (radio), among other media outlets, before finding himself blacklisted and unable to work in 1950. His response was to launch I.F. Stone’s Weekly, which for two decades exposed Washington D.C.’s corruption, malfeasance, corporate toadyism, and anti-democratic spirit, primarily through a thorough scouring of the Congressional Record and other government documents. The Weekly achieved a circulation of 70,000 and influence well beyond its numbers. Stone took on McCarthyism and racial discrimination in the 1950s and ‘60s, and was a vigorous opponent of the Vietnam War in the ‘60s and ‘70s. In the 1980s he learned ancient Greek and wrote a book about Socrates.
“Upon meeting Izzy Stone in the men’s room at the New Jewish Agenda founding conference in 1980, I shook his hand and said, ‘Hi, I’m Larry Bush, an aspiring writer.’ To which he replied, ‘Hi, I’m Izzy Stone, an aspiring writer.’” —Lawrence Bush

“In order for somebody to win an important, major fight 100 years hence, a lot of other people have got to be willing — for the sheer fun and joy of it — to go right ahead and fight, knowing you’re going to lose. You mustn’t feel like a martyr. You’ve got to enjoy it.” — I.F. Stone