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.
PART 71 – Some of the Fool Killer’s targets on both sides of the aisle in the May 1914 edition of James Larkin Pearson’s version of the folk figure:
*** President Woodrow Wilson, for his economic policies which Pearson and his Fool Killer blamed for bringing back the anti-working class (Grover) Cleveland Times.
*** The Government Printing Office which the Fool Killer deemed not worth the money spent on it because all they print is the Congressional Record and what amounts to tiresome government pronouncements.
(How slow a news month must it be to bother going after the Government Printing Office? Too bad the National Egg Council wasn’t around yet.)
*** Bootleggers who were hurriedly transporting as much whiskey as they could from Virginia into North Carolina, where booze was now illegal. They did this because they could charge much more for liquor in a state where it was officially banned.
*** Pompous High Society members who looked down their noses at farmers.
*** Readers who demanded Pearson work only with printers who belonged to a union, even though he lived in a part of North Carolina where none were available. Continue reading
PART 70 – Some of the Fool Killer’s targets on both sides of the aisle in the April 1914 edition of James Larkin Pearson’s version of the folk figure: 
The previous installments of Fool Killer lore have seen the neglected 1800s folk figure in a variety of roles: 
In honor of the Halloween season this post will look at the Fool Killer as a 1980s slasher. 
THE FOOL KILLER – As we all know, Anthony Perkins starred in the eerie 1965 movie The Fool Killer as an amnesiac Civil War veteran who came to believe he was really the legendary title figure. A 1980s slasher version of the Fool Killer could feature a deranged killer who has similarly come to regard himself as the “real” one.
AUGUST 1919 RETURN – From January of 1910 to July of 1917, James Larkin Pearson’s monthly Fool-Killer had been published, with his revival of the violent folk figure doing his ages-old job of bashing political and societal fools. In April 1917 America entered World War One and by July Pearson felt that a unified front for wartime was appropriate. 
In August of 1919, nine months after the end of the war, Pearson changed the name back to The Fool-Killer and resumed the hard-hitting political satire. That month’s targeted fools included: 
JANUARY 1910 – James Larkin Pearson, poet and newspaper man, carried on the Fool Killer tradition from 1910 to 1917, then again from 1919 into the 1920s. Pearson’s fellow North Carolinian Charles Napoleon Bonaparte Evans had written the Fool Killer Letters of the 19th Century so it’s appropriate that another Tar Heel continue the lore for so many years of the 20th Century.
Pearson’s Fool-Killer was the mascot of the entire publication, which was merely 4-6 pages anyway, not simply the supposed author of letters regarding his body count of “fools.” Think of this Fool Killer (I prefer no hyphen) as the written word equivalent of Puck (1876-1918), the political cartoon mascot of the humor magazine of the same name.
*** Frederick Cook, who, the previous December, had seen his claim to have reached the North Pole ruled invalid and possibly fraudulent by the University of Copenhagen. (The Fool Killer was unable to locate Cook, however.)
PART TWENTY: In a surprising development Balladeer’s Blog was contacted by THE actual Fool Killer. Using Jimmy Neutron-level science I determined that this correspondent was indeed the actual supernatural figure who had been at large in America since the 1830s. 
Coming to you as I wander in search of fools to kill, as usual a murder of crows following in my wake to feast upon the ample corpses I leave behind me in my travels.
Balladeer's Blog 