"Fads, Follies & Delusions of the American People" Starring Billy Graham! [View all]

[onager]

Well, this was a find! As mentioned before, I'm de-cluttering my house and getting ready to move.

While sorting books to keep/donate/whatever, I ran across one I picked up many years ago in a used-book store. Buried it in the bookshelves, one of those "when I have time I'll read this" things. You know how it goes.

Fads, Follies and Delusions of the American People by Paul Vann. Published way back in 1967.

Mostly an overview of stuff like Ouija boards, Scrabble, flagpole-sitting, etc.

But also chapters entitled "Dianetics - Fraud on the Double" and a whole section on various preachers - including Father Divine and the sainted Billy Graham.

Sorry, don't have time to transcribe much. But there's a pretty hilarious part where the actor Red Skelton testified before a federal tax-evasion probe into Los Angeles gangster Mickey Cohen, back in the 1950s.

According to Skelton - Cohen told him the Graham organization promised Cohen $15,000 just to visit a "Crusade" and another $10,000 if would publicly Come To Jesus on live TV.

The Graham organization also allegedly gave Cohen $5,000 in free walking-around money. (The 1950's, remember, so he could have walked a long way on 5 grand.) Graham and his PR people, naturally, denied all this.

In the end, apparently, it was just another case of Cohen fleecing a bunch of rubes, something in which Cohen was an expert. At one point Cohen finally said, "If I want religion, I'll go to a rabbi."

He was also facing more immediate problems, like that federal rap for tax evasion. Not to mention an ongoing gang war in Los Angeles, with such neat sidebars as the famous "Battle of the Sunset Strip." Then there was Mr. Cohen's little tiff with the Sicilian gentleman Mr. Jack Dragna, who expressed his displeasure by dynamiting Cohen's new mansion in Brentwood.