References in Popular Culture
- Coughlin was mentioned in a verse of Woody Guthrie's pro-interventionist song "Lindbergh": "Yonder comes Father Coughlin, wearin' the silver chain, Gas on the stomach and Hitler on the brain."
- Coughlin was attacked in 1942 cartoons by Theodor Seuss Geisel, best known for his children's books written under the pen name of Dr. Seuss.
- Sinclair Lewis's 1935 novel about a fascist coup in the United States, It Can't Happen Here, features a "Bishop Prang", an extremely successful pro-fascist radio host who is said to be "to the pioneer Father Coughlin"..."as the Ford V-8 to the Model A".
- The producers of the HBO television series Carnivàle have said that the character of Brother Justin Crowe was inspired by Coughlin.
- In the fictional work The Plot Against America, author Philip Roth uses Coughlin as the villain who helps a pro-fascist government.
- Sax Rohmer's 1936 novel President Fu Manchu features a character based on Coughlin, a Catholic priest and radio host who is the only person who knows that a criminal mastermind is manipulating a U.S. presidential race.
- Cole Porter referenced and rhymed "Coughlin" in his 1935 song "A Picture of Me Without You" (in the fourth refrain): "Picture City Hall without boondogglin', picture Sunday tea minus Father Coughlin".
- Coughlin's influence on American antisemitic organizations in the 1930s and 1940s is referenced in Arthur Miller's 1945 novel Focus.
- In the M*A*S*H episode "The Bus", Frank Burns claims that during his sophomore year he lost a debate to a Jewish fellow student by the name of Helen Rappaport. The topic of the debate was "Should Father Coughlin become our next President?"
Read more about this topic: Charles Coughlin
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Popular culture entered my life as Shirley Temple, who was exactly my age and wrote a letter in the newspapers telling how her mother fixed spinach for her, with lots of butter.... I was impressed by Shirley Temple as a little girl my age who had power: she could write a piece for the newspapers and have it printed in her own handwriting.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“The popular definition of tragedy is heavy drama in which everyone is killed in the last act, comedy being light drama in which everyone is married in the last act.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man,—a sort of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilization destined to have a speedy limit.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)