FOOL KILLER 63: APRIL 1913

Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of the many facets of Fool Killer lore. FOR PART ONE, INCLUDING THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT IN THE 1850s, CLICK HERE 

63. Some of the Fool Killer’s targets in the April of 1913 edition of James Larkin Pearson’s Fool-Killer:

*** Historians who sensationalized war and newspaper publishers who sensationalized crime. 

*** The late tycoon J.P. Morgan, who had recently passed away. Pearson and his Fool-Killer tried being a bit respectful of the dead but ultimately hurled snark, observing “… the times and conditions that produced him will produce others like him, and the heel of the oppressor will continue to grind the necks of the poor.” 

              Those were the days when not even the elected officials owned by wealthy families like the Morgans accumulated anywhere near as much money as those who owned them. Think of today’s abusive and repulsive families like the Bidens, Cheneys, Pelosis, Bushes, Clintons, Romneys and so many others from both political parties who have COMBINED obscene wealth with political influence to be sold. They plunder the public treasury while making shady money on the side and breaking laws that the rest of us are expected to abide by.

*** Forever chaotic Mexico. The Revolution of 1910 led to the final downfall of decades-long dictator Porfirio Diaz in 1911. Diaz’s reform replacement, Francisco Madero, was overthrown and arrested by Victoriano Huerta, who had just had Madero killed in 1913. The Fool-Killer bitingly observed “They sure don’t waste any time in Mexico deliberating over what to do with their ex-presidents.”

*** Voters who go along with what the Democrat and Republican party bosses say their concerns should be, even though those party bosses and their owners just enrich themselves at the voters’ expense and tell the voters to ignore their own needs. Some things never change!

*** Child labor.

*** The United States government, which he said “Should be the shield of the weak, became the weapon of the strong.” 

*** Woodrow Wilson’s secretary of state William Jennings Bryan for still selling subscriptions to his publication The Commoner and for seeming impotent in the face of global problems.

*** In what would become a recurring theme for Pearson’s Fool-Killer, this edition featured an “L. Frank Baum meets Frankenstein” diversion in which the Rocky D. Oilerfeller Institute (Rockefeller Institute) in New York state stitched together limbs and organs of multiple donors into one person.

              The resulting humanoid had the head of a preacher, the chest of a drummer, the heart of a lawyer, the stomach and bowels of a farmer, the left arm of a blacksmith and the right arm of an editor. One of the legs came from a hobo and the other came from a dandified male fashion plate.

              After recovering and leaving the institute, this being wound up dying from trying to enact all his donors’ qualities at once. His mouth wanted to preach, his heart wanted to tell lies, his stomach wanted to eat corn bread and bacon, his left arm wanted a hammer and his right arm wanted a pen. His left leg wanted to strut and dance and his right leg didn’t want to do much of anything. The experimental creation’s body fell apart and was buried at sundown.   

Among the Fool Killer’s pithier remarks this time around:

“The dollar rules the pulpit, and the Devil rules the pew.”

“If you could fasten a crank to a tobacco-chewer’s jaw you could get motive power enough to turn a grindstone.”

“Society etiquette is the science of making a fool of yourself to please other fools.”

“When the Devil wants something done that he is ashamed to do himself, he turns the job over to a hypocrite.”

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