Father Coughlin
From RationalWiki
Father Coughlin (Charles E. Coughlin) was a Catholic priest who is often cited as a prototype of right-wing talk radio. He was popular during the Great Depression.
He was originally a supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, using his radio program to promote Roosevelt for president in 1932. After 1934 he turned on Roosevelt and began taking on an increasingly cranky tone, turning toward the political right.
Coughlin was obsessed with monetary policy, espousing some crank ideas about "sound money" which he claimed would put an end to the Depression. He opposed the gold standard which he saw as putting control of the U.S. money supply under the control of "the money manipulators". Likely, his early support of Roosevelt came about because he saw Roosevelt as somebody who would, in his words, "drive the money changers from the temple", and Roosevelt did indeed take the U.S. off the gold standard in 1933. It is also likely Coughlin turned on Roosevelt shortly thereafter because Roosevelt showed no interest in enacting Coughlin's other, more esoteric proposals. Among Coughlin's views was an opposition to the Federal Reserve bank, a view held to this day by many cranky "sound money" advocates, some of them for anti-Semitic reasons on the grounds the Fed is allegedly controlled by Jews.
In 1936 he formed a short-lived alliance with Francis Townsend (originator of the Townsend Plan), and with anti-Semitic demagogue Gerald L.K. Smith, to form the Union Party to contest the 1936 elections against Roosevelt. The Union Party failed miserably at the polls and disbanded after the 1936 elections; Coughlin announced his retirement from the airwaves, but returned within a few months with a program which often increasingly expressed anti-Semitic views, opposition to the League of Nations, and sympathy for Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. He founded an organization called the National Union for Social Justice and a publication called Social Justice. In 1941 with the U.S. entry into World War II, the Catholic Church ordered Coughlin - who by then was openly expressing support for the Axis powers - off the air and to and return to his duties as a parish priest in Michigan.
Coughlin's radio program employed a ranting style which often began soft-spoken and "religious" sounding but grew in intensity until he was ranting against Roosevelt, Great Britain, the League of Nations, "international bankers", Communist influence in America, and anyone else he decided to rant about that day. Far too many of today's radio hosts like Michael Savage seem to have borrowed their style from Coughlin.
