Comments on: The Times of Harvey Milk

By: cs

cs — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 13:58:22 +0000

The Snopes link is not very convincing. Snopes admits that a defense expert did suggest that junk food altered White’s thinking, but it was only a “parenthetical aside” and not part of the actual defense case. I’m not sure how Snopes claims to know which defense claims were part of their actual case (and which affected the jury).

By: James

James — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 01:58:01 +0000

The acquittal was an outrage, but the “Twinkie defense” is a myth. I think this was held the first time because it contained a link, so look it up on Snopes. As their final paragraph notes, the truth is actually probably more outrageous than the myth.

By: James

James — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 01:56:42 +0000

The acquittal was an outrage, but the “Twinkie defense” is a myth: http://www.snopes.com/legal/twinkie.asp

(Indeed, as the final paragraph notes, the truth is probably more outrageous than the myth.)

By: JoB

JoB — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 13:27:29 +0000

Why is it that of the few movies I see, all of them become a topic on CT? ;-)

Milk, not a very good movie – nowhere near the documentary – but an extremely important one nonetheless given that the upbeat ending indeed would, even decades later, be a bit over the top (why else did Sean Penn need to use the stage to draw attention to the gay cause?).

One thing the movie did to me (which is not something the documentary did to me, as far as I do remember) is show how crucial the forced ‘coming out’ was.

By: Tim B

Tim B — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 02:32:25 +0000

Whoops—you forgot to mention that hulu.com is only available in the USA.

By: roy belmont

roy belmont — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 19:01:20 +0000

Mrs. T:
Should you have seen fit somehow to work cigars into that, my awe of your dynamic erudition would have ascended to the boundless.

By: Sebastian

Sebastian — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 14:54:58 +0000

It’s interesting to compare “The Times of Harvey Milk” to “Milk.” Despite Sean Penn’s amazing performance, I like the documentary much better – but this very well could reflect my own failings in film appreciation.
Chris Orr of TNR made the same point and came down on the side of the documentary even more strongly. So your instinctive film appreciation seems to be doing fine…

By: Mrs Tilton

Mrs Tilton — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 07:56:39 +0000

….the infamous Cuban intolerance of homosexuals, which the right is constantly harping about. What the revolution banished from Cuba, …, was a wide-open sex tourist industry, … where any predilection was catered to, and Cuban children were bought and sold to wealthy perverts.

Cuba might have stamped out the prostitution of children to rich American sex tourists, but it is communist. And I am certain that is the sole and entire explanation why a conservative stalwart like Limbaugh prefers democratic holiday destinations like the Dominican Republic.

By: roy belmont

roy belmont — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 03:25:58 +0000

There may be a subtext to the ridiculous “twinkie” defense. Or there may not.
The surface idea is it was a junk-food-induced psychosis defense, which many people at the time found, and most people still find, grotesquely absurd and disgusting as an excuse for cold-blooded murder.
But the word “twinkie” was then, and still is a code word for underage male sex objects. Male children as sex objects.
The idea being that gay liberation meant liberation for pedophiles, in some minds.
Since almost no one could get the issue and its darker ancillaries out into the public forum, and so make the distinction between healthy gay sexuality and unhealthy sexual predation, which was a lot of what made Milk so heroic to so many, that he seemed capable of articulating that distinction, the fears of people like Dan White went unanswered.
The Freudian bizarreness of White cycling his blood sugar out to insulin psychosis on “twinkies” may have had that subtext, or it may not.
Certainly there were those in the law enforcement community who would read that word in that context as signifying something more disturbing than just junk food, and White was close to that community, as well as to the puritanically intolerant side of traditional S.F. Catholics.
No accurate history of those hideous events is complete without at least a recognition of the valid concerns of those who saw first hand the damage done to young lives in the sexual underworld.
The same subtext is probably operating in the infamous Cuban intolerance of homosexuals, which the right is constantly harping about.
What the revolution banished from Cuba, among other things, was a wide-open sex tourist industry, run by Meyer Lanksy’s criminal organization, where any predilection was catered to, and Cuban children were bought and sold to wealthy perverts.
Sad things all around. But maybe not as one-dimensional as it seems at first glance.

By: Mrs Tilton

Mrs Tilton — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 00:26:10 +0000

As coincidence would have it, we watched Milk on DVD this evening with our teen son. I have no reason to think he’s gay. But if he is, I hope the film will help him understand that there is nothing at all wrong with him or who he is. And if he isn’t, I hope it will help him understand exactly the same thing.

(As a side note, the film should also lay to rest some positive gay stereotypes; specifically, the idea that being gay automatically confers fashion genius. Some viewers might have been impressed when Milk got a haircut and shave and started wearing a three-piece suit. For me, the really dramatic transformation came when he finally stopped wearing white socks with the suit.)

By: Uncle Kvetch

Uncle Kvetch — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:23:51 +0000

Oh—and God bless Jello Biafra. Thanks, Matt.

By: Uncle Kvetch

Uncle Kvetch — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:21:20 +0000

It’s a brilliant and devastating film—I first saw it when I was just coming out, and I’ve revisited it several times since, and it’s never failed to leave me shattered. So much so, in fact, that I think I’ve been subconsciously avoiding Milk because I don’t see how it can possibly do a better job of telling the story.

By: Ben Alpers

Ben Alpers — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 22:29:00 +0000

Growing up in the Bay Area, these events were part of my childhood (I was a freshman in high school when White and Moscone were assassinated).

One side note: at the heart of the story was Mayor Moscone’s decision not to reappoint White who had resigned from the Board of Supervisors. Yet another, if extremely bizarre, example of what a bad idea it is to fill vacant electoral offices with executive appointments rather than special elections. (To be clear, Moscone was no more responsible for his own death than were the Twinkies Dan White had consumed, but events would likely have played out rather differently if there had been a special election in White’s district instead of the always peculiar politics of appointing someone to an elected post.)

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:17:02 +0000

I’d known the story of Harvey Milk from listening to old Jello Biafra spoken-word albums when I was a punk rock kid in high-school but only recently watched the documentary (from netflix). It is very good. Biafra claimed that the police in SF wore “Free Dan White” t-shirts under their uniforms around the trial but it’s not mentioned in the movie. It wouldn’t surprise me, though. I haven’t seen the film but do strongly recommend watching the documentary. (It’s a very small part of the tragedy, but without this killing we also might have been spared Senator Diane Feinstein.)

By: Randy Paul

Randy Paul — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:13:50 +0000

I lived in Harvey Milk’s district in an area called Noe Valley during that time. I voted for him because he was the candidate who cared the most for all citizens of the district.

He was a good man who cared about his community.