FOOL KILLER: PART NINETEEN – OCTOBER OF 1919

Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of the many facets of Fool Killer lore. FOR PART ONE, INCLUDING THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT, CLICK HERE

PART NINETEEN: James Larkin Pearson, creator of this new Fool Killer, featured a complaint that I can relate to, since I go through the same thing here at Balladeer’s Blog – “Democrats write and ask me to lambaste the Republicans and Republicans write and suggest that I cuss out the Democrats. All right, boys, I am going to comply with both requests, and then you will both be mad.” 

That also captures the position of Charles Napoleon Bonaparte Evans of the Milton Chronicle when he began the Fool Killer Letters around 1850. Evans and his Fool Killer (Jesse Holmes) were Whigs who bashed both the Democrats and the Republicans. After the Civil War, Evans and his Fool Killer bashed both the Democrats of the Ku Klux Klan and the Republican Carpetbaggers. 

Coincidentally, James L Pearson and his Fool Killer observed that (just like today) the upheavals wracking the world of 1919 were proceeding from the bottom UP, so the “Silk Hat Brigade” at the top of the power and money structure (think of today’s Corporate Globalists) were the people least capable of understanding the emerging changes.

The Fool Killer’s targets in this October, 1919 edition: 

*** Sleazy, money-hungry Preachers were taken to the woodshed yet again this time around. The Fool Killer loved preying on them because of their hypocrisy and corruption. And remember, this was long before Sinclair Lewis’ novel Elmer Gantry presented the definitive portrait of the type of Preachers bashed by Pearson. 

            The Fool Killer denied that it was just fear of him which was causing the shortage of young men willing to go into preaching, a shortage bemoaned by churches in 1919. The supernatural vigilante claimed it was also caused by talented men being driven away by the overall corruption in religion at the time.

*** Equally sleazy, money-hungry “spiritualists” – nicknamed “Boogers” in the slang of the time. Arthur Conan Doyle was still alive in 1919 and, as usual, that otherwise rational man willingly served as a public cheerleader for those con artists who claimed to be able to contact one’s dead loved ones.

            The Fool Killer came down hard on them and denounced Doyle as a fool, but a fool who had the Atlantic Ocean keeping him safe from our vigilante’s wrath.

*** Politicians who made a big production out of helping royal and wealthy families in Europe but snubbed the poor and the working class from that continent.

*** The biased and unreliable Associated Press, which the Fool Killer always referred to as “the Ass-ociated Press.” (He should see how pathetic they’ve become TODAY!)

*** The big daily papers who were not suffering from the paper shortage which had been raging since wartime and their agents who tried shutting down small papers like Pearson’s. The Fool Killer pointed out that there was never any shortage for the newspapers which stood beside “the Patriots of Plunder and the high muck-alorums of Wall Street and the devil.”

*** The Fool Killer blamed a supposed journalist of the time named Dave Lawrence for lumping The Fool-Killer publication in with 400 other “radical” publications which were supposedly egging on Labor and therefore should have their paper supply cut while “the Paper Famine” continued.

            “Save on paper?” the Fool Killer scoffed, “You tell ’em to go bite a hog.” (NOTE: This reminds me of today, as well, considering how the Silicon Valley Robber Barons want to limit “radical” publications’ access to the internet.)

*** Pearson and his Fool Killer once again weighed in to defend Eugene Debs and Kate O’Hare.

*** Episcopalians fighting over their new prayer books.

*** A Professor David Todd, formerly of Amherst College, who planned to float up to 50,000 feet in a balloon and attempt radio contact with Martians. 

*** Shoe manufacturers who were pricing them out of the range of the poor and the working class.

*** The greedy capitalists/ Bush Family Types who scuttled the National Industrial Conference of October 6th to 23rd, 1919. The bloated rich pigs still refused to recognize Labor’s right to collective bargaining.

            The Fool Killer also targeted any people who blamed Labor for walking out, implying those people were trying to make a rabbit reach an agreement with a hound dog who wanted to eat it.

*** Pearson and his Fool Killer observed that (just like today) the upheavals wracking the world of 1919 were proceeding from the bottom UP, so the “Silk Hat Brigade” at the top of the power and money structure (think of today’s Corporate Globalists) were the people least capable of understanding the emerging changes.

FOR PART TWENTY CLICK HERE

I WILL EXAMINE MORE FOOL KILLER LORE SOON. KEEP CHECKING BACK FOR UPDATES.

FOR MY LOOK AT JOE MAGARAC, THE STEEL MILL VERSION OF JOHN HENRY AND PAUL BUNYAN, CLICK HERE 

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