Tag Archives: Fool Killer lore

November 3, 2026 · 7:48 pm

FOOL KILLER PART EIGHTY-ONE: JANUARY NINETEEN SIXTEEN

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 81 – As always, it’s fascinating to read the over 100-year-old opinions of James Larkin Pearson (and by extension his Fool Killer), including the opinions that one doesn’t agree with. Here are some of the Fool Killer’s targets in January 1916:

*** The Democrat Woodrow Wilson administration, for claiming they had brought “a wave of prosperity” to America, even though the Fool Killer felt only Wilson’s rich cohorts were prospering. NOTE: James Larkin Pearson was a self-proclaimed Socialist but back then Socialists considered Woodrow Wilson a puppet of the capitalists. Today, Wilson gets denounced as a Socialist who supposedly “set America on the path” that anti-Socialists feel led to present-day problems.

*** The continuing, never-ending revolutions breaking out in Mexico.

*** Vice President Marshall, for justifying his and President Wilson’s opposition to women getting the right to vote by saying his wife opposed women’s suffrage.

*** What Pearson and his Fool Killer saw as “the legalized crimes of Capitalism.”

*** The Democrat Party, which he joked was cursing St. Louis by holding their Presidential Nominating Convention there in 1916. Continue reading →

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October 24, 2026 · 4:29 pm

FOOL KILLER PART EIGHTY: DECEMBER 1915

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 80 – As always, it’s fascinating to read the over 100-year-old opinions of James Larkin Pearson (and by extension his Fool Killer), including the opinions that one doesn’t agree with. Here are some of the Fool Killer’s targets in December 1915.

*** Dr. Frank Crane, Methodist clergyman, for his condescending newspaper columns that blamed the poor for their plight by stating they should have saved money. That advice ignored the fact that if someone doesn’t even have enough income to pay for all their necessities then they have no money to put into savings.

*** The two major political parties, whom he lumped together under the term “Redemocans” (he also called them Republicrats). Today we call them the Uniparty. He also bashed people who still voted for either of the two major parties.

*** Charles Taze Russell, leader of what would be called Jehovah’s Witnesses after his death in 1916, for his faulty prediction that 1914 would be the end of the human kingdom and the coming of the Messiah’s Kingdom.  

*** The country’s wealthiest and most powerful, whom he called the House of Mammon. The figures he named this issue were Charles M. Schwab and J.P. Morgan. The Fool Killer criticized the money they were making from War Preparedness and named Democrat President Woodrow Wilson and Republican former President Theodore Roosevelt their servants.  Continue reading →

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October 12, 2026 · 9:03 pm

FOOL KILLER PART SEVENTY-NINE: NOVEMBER 1915

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 79 – As always, it’s fascinating to read the over 100-year-old opinions of James Larkin Pearson (and by extension his Fool Killer), including the opinions that one doesn’t agree with. Here are some of the Fool Killer’s targets in November 1915.

*** Christians who called for America to enter the World War on the side of the Allied Powers, depicting them as pious hypocrites who wanted to go to war for the benefit of the wealthy and powerful.

*** President Woodrow Wilson, depicting him as neglecting all national problems while paying far more attention to his romance with Edith Bolling Galt, like himself widowed. The two would marry in December 1915.

*** Tycoon – or plutocrat as Pearson and his Fool Killer called the wealthy – John D. Rockefeller II, who assumed the reins of his father’s corporate empire. “Johndee the 2nd” was depicted using phony charm in contrast to the open contempt that his father had shown to the working class. They especially targeted John II’s P.R. stunt of visiting miners for some photo opportunities.

*** Imperial Japan for intimidating and browbeating China.

*** People who opposed voting rights for women.

*** The Anglo-French Committee, who came to America wanting a Half-Billion-Dollar loan to keep fighting the war. Continue reading →

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September 29, 2026 · 8:52 am

FOOL KILLER PART SEVENTY-EIGHT: OCTOBER 1915

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 78 – As always, it’s fascinating to read the over 100-year-old opinions of James Larkin Pearson (and by extension his Fool Killer), including the opinions that one doesn’t agree with. Here are some of the Fool Killer’s targets in October 1915:

*** Dr. Stephen Herbert Langdon, for his claim that his translations of ancient Sumerian clay tablets convinced him that instead of the Biblical First Man it was really the Bible’s version of the Survivor of the Great Flood who ate of the Forbidden Fruit. And the Forbidden Fruit was really a legume from a cassia tree, not an apple.

        NOTE: I found news articles about Langdon’s claims as far back as August of 1914, but they were apparently just getting big in the U.S. in 1915. Oddly, in 1920 the New York Times, Antique Religion and others started covering Langdon’s claims as if he had just made them. At any rate, Langdon’s claims eventually influenced comparative mythology theories about the Adam and Noah stories being based on Utnapishtim and other figures from Sumerian myths.

*** Eastman Kodak Company. The Fool Killer was being very cynical about the recent decision by the Federal District Court at Buffalo, New York which ordered the company to be dissolved on anti-trust grounds. They even joked that Kodak stock would probably go up and that the company would survive intact given how so many big money corporations had circumvented anti-trust rulings from courts. 

*** King George V & Czar Nicholas of the Allied Powers, and Kaiser Wilhelm of the Central Powers, all of whom said that God was on THEIR side in the raging World War.  Continue reading →

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September 22, 2026 · 8:46 pm

FOOL KILLER PART SEVENTY-SEVEN: SEPTEMBER 1915

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 77 – As always, it’s fascinating to read the over 100-year-old opinions of James Larkin Pearson (and by extension his Fool Killer), including the opinions that one doesn’t agree with. Here are the Fool Killer’s targets in September 1915. There was no August issue that year.

*** Former President Theodore Roosevelt for his repeated calls to current President Woodrow Wilson that America should enter the ongoing World War.

*** Uber-wealthy J.P. Morgan for pompously proclaiming that the war would be over within a year. (As we all know, it actually lasted until November 11th, 1918.)

*** The Chicago Evening Post for supporting U.S. entry to the war.

*** Thomas Edison, but only with a good-natured joke about his recent remark “I owe everything to my wife.” He said she should take Thomas for everything he was worth. Continue reading →

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September 15, 2026 · 8:45 pm

FOOL KILLER PART SEVENTY-SIX: JULY 1915

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 76 – As always, it’s fascinating to read the over 100-year-old opinions of James Larkin Pearson (and by extension his Fool Killer), including the opinions that one doesn’t agree with. Here are the Fool Killer’s targets in July, 1915:

*** Frank Holt – real name Erich Muenter – an Imperial German spy who was active in the U.S. despite America not having entered the World War yet. (We would not enter the war until April 1917.) In addition to teaching anti-American sentiments at Ivy League universities Harvard and Cornell, he set off a bomb in the U.S. Capitol building, sabotaged U.S. war aid being sent to the Allied Powers against the Central Powers in Europe and elsewhere and tried assassinating J.P. Morgan’s son Jack in his own home.   

           “Holt” also murdered his own pregnant wife with arsenic before taking his own life on July 6th, 1915.

*** An unidentified ripoff artist in Iowa who was selling a device which he claimed cured blindness. 

*** Cigarette smokers. For newbies to Pearson’s Fool Killer, he was a very early critic of the health dangers of smoking.

*** The rotating series of “official” Mexican governments, which made it hard for other countries to know which one to recognize. Continue reading →

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September 3, 2026 · 10:32 am

FOOL KILLER PART SEVENTY-FIVE: JUNE 1915

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 75 – Regular readers may notice that picking up in June of 1915 is quite a jump from last week’s Fool Killer installment, which left off in Fall 1914. That’s because I can honestly say that James Pearson’s version of The Fool-Killer hit a decided creative dry patch for several months.

I am genuinely surprised because Pearson’s Fool Killer had been so interesting. I’ve covered several 1920s installments and then slipped back to begin with his 1910 beginnings of this publication and nearly every installment kept me fascinated with every page. Not so with autumn of 1914 through May 1915.

Pearson seemed at odds with how to react to a world at war and was feeling his way toward how best to approach a satirical take. For months his output was so repetitious, unfocused and lacking in bite that I had to force myself to keep reading. I’m reviewing the June 1915 edition because it features his reaction to American deaths in the sinking of the Lusitania by a German submarine, a major development which nearly resulted in the United States entering the World War right then and there. Continue reading →

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August 27, 2026 · 10:59 am

FOOL KILLER PART SEVENTY-FOUR: OCTOBER 1914

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 74 – Some of the Fool Killer’s targets on both sides of the aisle in the October of 1914 edition of the folk figure. The World War is in full swing.

*** Dr. William F. Snow of the American Hygiene Association. The Fool Killer targeted Snow over his crusade against the unhygienic nature of kissing. Dr. Snow had just patented his weird Sanitary Kiss invention. That invention involved the pair of kissers using sanitized tissue paper over their mouths with a hole in the middle, looking for all the world like the kind of tissue paper we now place over toilets in public restrooms.

*** The editors of the Greensboro Daily News, who called for “less nonsensical” war songs compared to the past. The U.S. had not yet entered the war, so the country’s coverage of it was less than gripping at first.

*** President Woodrow Wilson, Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan and Senator John Sharp Williams of Mississippi for blaming the war for everything that the voters were holding them responsible for.

*** High Society Fashionistas for the way they seemed lost now that the war had prevented the release of the New Fall Line from Paris.

*** The “Redemocans”, one of the Fool Killer’s words for what we today call the Uniparty. He also called them Republicrats, a word we still use today. This month he depicted the Republicrat Devil driving honest outsiders out of politics by “setting all the political dogs on them and tearing them to pieces.” Continue reading →

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August 16, 2026 · 4:52 pm

FOOL KILLER PART SEVENTY-THREE: JULY 1914

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 73 – Some of the Fool Killer’s targets on both sides of the aisle in the July of 1914 edition of James Larkin Pearson’s version of the folk figure.

*** Former Republican President Theodore Roosevelt for the media blitz accompanying his hunting trip to South America. Pearson and his Fool Killer liked Theodore as president but he was tired of the media circus surrounding every move of Roosevelt’s post-presidency life.

*** The federal government, for allowing starvation inside the U.S. while sending out millions to feed people overseas.

*** Tycoon John D. Rockefeller, Jr. for trying to distract from his slaughter of miners and their women and children in Ludlow back in April by teaching Sunday School and doing charitable work to help prostitutes find another way of life. The jokes that were made about the kind of “work” that Rockefeller was doing with the Red Light Ladies should be obvious.

*** Treasury Secretary William McAdoo, who had pushed for the reintroduction of the Income Tax the previous year. Pearson, though a self-confessed socialist, did not meet the 2026 definition of socialism because he opposed income taxes as a blow against the working class and not the wealthy.

*** Democrat President Woodrow Wilson, whom he blamed for destroying the U.S. economy. Continue reading →

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August 11, 2026 · 4:41 am

FOOL KILLER PART SEVENTY-TWO: JUNE 1914

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 72 – Some of the Fool Killer’s targets on both sides of the aisle in the June of 1914 edition of James Larkin Pearson’s version of the folk figure.

*** Tycoon John D. Rockefeller, Jr. for his role in the Ludlow Miner Massacre back in April. A few lines from that condemnation – “Who trains the guns on helpless ones, til precious blood in rivers runs? John D. Jr.” (also as Johndee Junior).

*** The Dick Act, which was named after Charles Dick when it passed back in 1903. It granted presidents certain powers when it came to activating militias. Some feared that President Woodrow Wilson would use the Dick Act to start drafting American men to serve in the military.

*** Tycoons (he often called them Plutocrats) who spent more money on paintings of the Madonna and Child than they ever spent feeding and clothing real, live mothers and their children. Continue reading →

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