During the Thursday night telemcast of the Billy James Hargis so-called “Cristian Crusade,” Channel 9 will give are-time to GENERAL EDWIN WALKER, a right-wing fascist who has encouraged JFK to invade the peaceful peoples of Cuba and who has formented anti-black, anti-integration “HATE-SPEAK” all over the south. (If you have doubts about the accuracy of this information, check the “TV Guide.”) These two men stand for everythig we fouht against in WWII, and their Fascist RAVINGS have no place on the are-waves. EDWIN WALKER was one of the WHITE SUPREMACISTS who tried to bar JAMES MERDITH from attending “OLE MISS.” If you love America, protest the free are-time given to men who pretch HATE and VIOLENCE. Write a letter! Better still, come to Channel 9 on Dec. 27 and “sit in!”
I briefly pondered the misspellings, then folded the flyer and put it in the box where I kept my manuscripts.
If there was a protest at the station, it wasn’t reported in the
At first it was just Hargis, sitting behind an office-set desk and pretending to scribble important notes while a canned choir sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” He was a fattish fellow with a lot of plastered-back black hair. As the choir faded out, he put down his pen, looked into the camera, and said: “Welcome to the Christian Crusade, neighbors. I come with good news—
Hargis bent the Almighty’s ear for at least ten minutes. He covered the usual stuff, thanking God for the chance to spread the gospel and instructing Him to bless those who’d sent in love-offerings. Then he got down to business, asking God to arm His Chosen People with the sword and buckler of righteousness so we could defeat communism, which had reared its ugly head just ninety miles off the shores of Florida. He asked God to grant President Kennedy the wisdom (which Hargis, being closer to the Big Guy, already possessed) to go in there and root out the tares of godlessness. He also demanded that God put an end to the growing communist threat on American college campuses — folk music seemed to have something to do with it, but Hargis kind of lost the thread on that part. He finished by thanking God for his guest tonight, the hero of Anzio and the Chosin Reservoir, General Edwin A. Walker.
Walker appeared not in uniform but in a khaki suit that closely resembled one. The creases in his pants looked sharp enough to shave with. His stony face reminded me of the cowboy actor Randolph Scott. He shook Hargis’s hand and they talked about communism, which was rife not just on the college campuses, but in the halls of Congress and the scientific community as well. They touched on fluoridation. Then they schmoozed about Cuba, which Walker called “the cancer of the Caribbean.”
I could see why Walker had failed so badly in his run for the Texas governorship the year before. At the front of a high school class he would have put the kids to sleep even in period one, when they were freshest. But Hargis moved him along smoothly, interjecting “Praise Jesus!” and “God’s witness, brother!” whenever things got a little sticky. They discussed an upcoming barnstorm crusade through the South called Operation Midnight Ride, and then Hargis invited Walker to clear the air concerning “certain scurrilous charges of segregationism that have surfaced in the New York press and elsewhere.”
Walker finally forgot he was on television and came to life. “You know that’s nothing but a truckload of commie propaganda.”
