In 1978 Dan White, a former cop and firefighter, was a newly elected San Francisco supervisor. (Like a councilman.) After about a year White suddenly resigned saying his wife was pregnant and he could not afford to earn only $9,600 annually. Mayor George Moscone publicly stated that if White changed his mind, he could have his job back. Five days later, after appeals from firefighters, police and neighborhood residents, White decided he wanted the job back. But by then, liberal supervisors, led by Supervisor Harvey Milk, had persuaded the mayor to appoint a liberal to the vacated seat. Believing he had been betrayed, White loaded his .38 revolver on the morning of Nov. 27, 1978 and went to City Hall. To avoid the metal detectors, he climbed in through a basement window, went to the mayor's office and shot Mayor Moscone twice, once in the chest and once the head, both at close range. White then reloaded his gun, went into the supervisors' chambers and killed Milk.
The defense was faced with a difficult problem. There was no doubt about the events; they admitted that White had done the killings. The problem lay in the appearance of White's meticulous planning. This did not look like a guy who had just suddenly snapped. They argued that he was depressed, that he began withdrawing, ignored his wife, stopped bathing and shaving, dressed in a slovenly way and ate poorly. That, plus the politics, "drove him around the bend." Defense attorney Schmidt added, "Whether or not ingestion of food stuffs with preservatives and sugar in high content causes you to alter your personality somehow, or causes you to act in an aggressive manner, I don't know. I'm not going to suggest to you for a minute that that occurs. But there is a minority opinion in psychiatric fields that there is some connection . . ."
And the "Twinkie Defense" was born.
White, who could have been sentenced to life, was sentenced to less than eight years and, with time off for good behavior, ended up serving five years, one month and nine days.
There have been many and varied evaluations of this case and most believe the food component in the defense had little to do with the decision. However, perhaps we should reconsider. Read the following selections from a Maine newspaper regarding the strike that has caused Hostess, the company that makes Twinkies, to close. You do not have to even eat the Twinkies to be driven crazy; proximity itself will drive you nuts.
Self-immolation may be a lot of things but constructive is not one of them.
The defense was faced with a difficult problem. There was no doubt about the events; they admitted that White had done the killings. The problem lay in the appearance of White's meticulous planning. This did not look like a guy who had just suddenly snapped. They argued that he was depressed, that he began withdrawing, ignored his wife, stopped bathing and shaving, dressed in a slovenly way and ate poorly. That, plus the politics, "drove him around the bend." Defense attorney Schmidt added, "Whether or not ingestion of food stuffs with preservatives and sugar in high content causes you to alter your personality somehow, or causes you to act in an aggressive manner, I don't know. I'm not going to suggest to you for a minute that that occurs. But there is a minority opinion in psychiatric fields that there is some connection . . ."
And the "Twinkie Defense" was born.
White, who could have been sentenced to life, was sentenced to less than eight years and, with time off for good behavior, ended up serving five years, one month and nine days.
There have been many and varied evaluations of this case and most believe the food component in the defense had little to do with the decision. However, perhaps we should reconsider. Read the following selections from a Maine newspaper regarding the strike that has caused Hostess, the company that makes Twinkies, to close. You do not have to even eat the Twinkies to be driven crazy; proximity itself will drive you nuts.
1. Labor leaders in Maine say the resilience of the Hostess workers on the picket line at the company’s Biddeford plant, which is closing because of the strike and eliminating all the jobs, gives them inspiration in the face of what they believe have been ongoing efforts — by politicians, including Gov. Paul LePage, and corporate investors — to reduce union influence.
So destruction is production, defeat is victory, and this disaster should encourage people to want to be union members.
2. “Everyone can relate to the fact that the worker class is funding the investor class,” said Sarah Bigney, spokeswoman for the Maine AFL-CIO
The worker "class" is funding the investor "class." The cross-pollination of work and investment is entirely ignored, the inanity of work "funding" completely accepted, all for the sake of a homicidal quasi-economic theory from the mid-nineteenth Century.
The worker "class" is funding the investor "class." The cross-pollination of work and investment is entirely ignored, the inanity of work "funding" completely accepted, all for the sake of a homicidal quasi-economic theory from the mid-nineteenth Century.
3. The union’s willingness to go down with the sinking ship — and in some cases take credit for sinking it — in the Hostess case may prove to corporate investors that the working class must be reckoned with, said University of Southern Maine economist and labor relations expert Michael Hillard.
This guy is a "labor relations expert."
Self-immolation may be a lot of things but constructive is not one of them.
No comments:
Post a Comment