fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2804 ]

[ SECRET POST #2804 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2804 ⌋

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Notes:

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Harvey Milk was assassinated the year before the movie was released -- an openly gay politician in San Francisco. His killer only spent a couple of years in jail because of the now-infamous "Twinkie Defense."

It wasn't a "twinkie defense". They mentioned twinkies like once. The defense was that he shot Milk and Moscone because he was severely mentally unbalanced, which he was.

But setting that aside, what does that imply about Star Trek: The Motion Picture to you?

DA

um

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twinkie_defense

that is the actual term, nonny

i'm aware it's the actual term. what i'm saying is that it's an inaccurate term and essentially an urban legend that had little to do with the actual trial of Dan White.

ok, it sounds real pretentious and forced-stupid to be like "that's not what it actualfax was!" when someone uses the term. it's like asking someone who calls someone else a "faggot" and informing him it's a bundle of sticks. you knew what they meant, don't be facetious

i don't know. to me, it pretty much read like they were using it in the very specific context of the actual trial. not as like, a general reference or term being used in a different context. they're talking about the actual trial of Dan White and in that context, it's an inaccurate narrative of what happened. i'm not being facetious and i'm not being intentionally obtuse (and hopefully not unintentionally obtuse). it's just not correct.

except that's what it was actual historically in real life trufax called, in the very specific context of the actual trial. did you not see them use quotation marks to actually quote people or what?

they said that White only spent a couple years in jail because of the Twinkie Defense

that's factually incorrect. there was no twinkie defense. people said there was but there wasn't. ergo, it is not true that White only spent a couple years in jail because of it, because it never existed.

more broadly, it's a term that contributes to an inaccurate understanding of what actually happened during those events. i think they could probably make the point that there was a widespread (possibly correct) perception that White's sentence was more lenient than it could have been because of underlying homophobia in the San Francisco establishment but, like, don't be factually incorrect about historical events and then expect no one to say you're wrong

the term "Twinkie Defense" is the catch-all term for all the stuff you just described: arguing "diminished capacity" based on ridic stuff compounded with people being willing to accept the BS as fact or whatever reason. you are a useless pedant

it wasn't a ridiculous defense, though. that's kind of my point. it was a legitimate argument, and the twinkies were one minor piece of evidence for it, and using the term "Twinkie Defense" plays into a narrative of events that's incorrect in significant ways.

I think a lot of people found it ridiculous though considering in the aftermath of the trial:

"As a result of Dan White's trial, California voters changed the law to reduce the likelihood of acquittals of accused who knew what they were doing but claimed their capacity was impaired."

According to wikipedia at least...

sorry, what? you don't think "i went, armed up, climbed through a window, and shot people i considered rivals and enemies in politics who i blamed for my failures but it wasn't murder, it was depression" isn't ridiculous? cali revoked diminished capacity after that for a reason

not ridiculous in the sense that it was the law on the books, and it was correctly applied. he had diminished capacity, the law said to treat diminished capacity this way, that's how it was treated. it might have been a bad or a ridiculous law but that's the fault of the person who wrote the laws.

oh boy, we got a cultural relativist here.

if it wasn't ridiculous why did cali revoke the law afterward? hint: because it was ridiculous all along

Yeah, but when you look at how the law was applied and the selective interpretations based on who the victim was…well…you can see why some people found it ridiculous I hope.
Anyway, when I used the term, I was using it to describe the context of the time -- that a gay politician was assassinated and that his killer got off too lightly compared to others whose mental state was comparable to White.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2014-09-06 21:32 (UTC) - Expand

DA

It's "a catchall term coined by reporters during their coverage of the trial of defendant Dan White for the murders of San Francisco city supervisor Harvey Milk and mayor George Moscone." I don't know what else you want when people are using the exactly correct term.

for people not to be wrong? i guess?

it was a catchall term that became popular in the press, but it wasn't accurate for what actually happened in the trial, and since they were specifically talking about the trial...

It's what it was called by the press, regardless of the fact that their definition was wrong.

Meaning that I don't think it's fair to criticize Gene Roddenberry for queerbaiting when there was likely no way he could have feasibly included a LGBT character in 1979. When people were still being assassinated (and not just famous politicians, but also regular people were being assaulted, discriminated against, and worse), I don't think it's fair to describe it the way you would a creator in 2014 "teasing" fans about a slash ship to keep (mostly female) viewers interested. Those creators have a far greater ability to make that canon -- so in their case, it IS queerbaiting. But not in 1979.

It's like how people talk shit about Kirk and Uhura's kiss in Plato's Stepchildren because it was forced. BECAUSE THAT WAS THE ONLY GODDAMN WAY TO GET IT PAST THE CENSORS. It wasn't perfect, but criticizing the people behind it, who were fighting tooth and nail to have EVEN THAT, doesn't take into account the context of the times at all.

Harvey Milk wasn't killed because he was gay, though. He was killed because Dan White was a mentally unbalanced person who blamed Milk and Moscone for the loss of his job.

I don't know about that…

I understand that the "Twinkie Defense" was largely media sensationalism, but I don't believe that homophobia had no role in the assassination:

"In a thoughtful essay about San Francisco's "wild, manic depressive swings," and "its not very well-hidden undercurrents," the day after the verdict, Chronicle columnist Herb Caen remarked about the police support for Dan White and their "dislike (understatement) of homosexuals." In an offhand remark, he added that one attorney was calling it "the Twinkie insanity defense."

The guy only got a couple of years in jail for murdering a politician...

he only got a couple of years because he was, again, mentally unbalanced.

you can make an argument that there was underlying homophobia in the San Francisco establishment, and certainly in the San Francisco police force there was, but that's something separate from the assassination itself, and i would argue separate to a large extent from the trial. those undercurrents existed in politics and the assassination brought them out in many ways, but they weren't the central cause of it.

Are you sure about that? Because if mentally unbalanced only gets you a couple of years then there are a lot of battered spouses in prison who are serving sentences that are much too long…

I think, though, that a lot of people have recognized that homophobia played a large part in the case -- though I'll concede that that homophobia in the establishment could be a bigger factor.

I'll be honest, though, the reason I thought of Milk (and this is kind of a stupid reason) is because The Motion Picture is set in San Francisco and that's where Starfleet is based which, along with the rainbow on the poster, is why I tend to draw the connection.

There are plenty of people who pre-plan a murder carefully to the extent that they choose bullets that will cause the most possible damage who get put away for a lot longer than 2 years.

but you are familliar with the dynamic that an internalized hatred/contempt for people of a certain race, gender or sexual preference tends to lower the threshold for killing them, when opposed in any sort of conflict, yes? de-humanization? nazi-germany? an of these ring a bell?
it's not just undercurrents in the establishment, it's the mindset of people those days that killed so many gay people, not few of them at their own hands, because they believed themselves to be somehow disgusting and forever unable to live a wholesome life.

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