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Show me a Russian cemetery and I U
'
show you a Communist plot -
Anonymous

When you mention Tulsa. Oklahoma,
to anyone, if he s heard of it he will
’
envision oil magnates. Oral Roberts and
Leon Russell, not necessarily in that
order. Not long ago, the Oil Capital
made headlines when some local Ku
Klux ( Clansmen tried to make a citizen ’ s
arrest of the cast of Hair during the
nude scene. (The audience booed, and
security men ushered the KKKreeps out
the door.)
But Tulsa is also the home of Billy
James Hargis ' Christian Crusade, an
anti- Communist organization which per-
ceives the USA through Red sunglasses.
It searches for Commies in universities,
in the National Council of Churches,
and sees a Kremlin plot behind the use
of "music directed at destroying the
mental and emotional stability of
'
America s youth through a scheme
capable of producing mass neurosis. "
As Hitler had his Goebbels and
Nixon lias his Herb Kline for propa -
ganda purposes, Hargis has Rev. David
A. Nocbel. That’ s probably an unfair
comparison since he s more like " Otto
'
"
the Orkin Man of the Far Right, who
§ leaves no (Rolling) stone unturned as he
searches for (Red ) Beatles underneath,
o or ferrets out the Marxist termites
|crawling out of Woody Guthrie. Noebel
£ > neither the William Buckley intellectual
is thirtyish, balding, mild-mannered and
° nor Wallace demagogue one might ex -
i
5 pect after reading his books. He takes
£ himself quite seriously. As lie would say
1 to me later: " Oh , we laugh at ourselves
Heraton doing what we are doing but we still
= all the time and we lave a lot of fun
think it ' s very serious business. ”
His "business ” (and it is indeed that,
since he estimates Christian Crusade s
'
includes: teaching at the Ouistun Cru-
f income last year at about S2V6 million)
sade Anti- Communist Youth University
Manitou Springs.
(unaccredited)
in
Colorado; vice- president of American
Christian College (unaccredited! in
Tulsa; and writing a scries of books on
the rock- music-as-a- Commie-plot theme.
Or . . . Communistic Cocophony The first. Rhythm. Riots and Revo-
Comments on and by the hition. sold 160,000 paperback copies,
Christian Crusade s Chief Chronicler: and his latest offering is The Marxist
'
Rer. David A. Soebel Minstrels - A Handbook On Commun- -
byDavid Batterson ist Subversion of Music.” (Those inter
ested in obtaining these and other
transitory tomes can write: Christian
Crusade Publications. P.O. Box 977,
Tulsa.OK 74102.)
I ventured to take a look at Rev.
-
Nocbel ’s 180 ° differentiated concept of
popular music and its superstars.
coecm
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