Who's to Say What's Obscene?

by Paul Krassner

  This by-now traditional five-day extravaganza for 300 guests was hosted by Wall Street investment banker Herbert Allen, president and CEO of Allen & Company. There were moguls all over the campground, overflowing with the country’s most influential leaders in business, entertainment and media. I could feel myself developing a severe case of imposter syndrome.

  Saturday was Talent Night, and it was absolutely hysterical. Part-time Sun Valley resident Tom Hanks served as the emcee. Warren Buffett was the opening act, performing a medley of Jimmy Buffett songs, all rendered out of tune. Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos skillfully juggled five Kindles (wireless electronic books). Edgar Bronfman from Warner Music—dressed like the character Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof—sang with zest, “If I Were a Rich Man.” Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang—who had previously turned down an offer from Microsoft to buy Yahoo—sang a duet with the ex-CEO of Microsoft, Bill Gates, harmonizing on a song from Annie Get Your Gun, “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better.” Meg Whitman of eBay did a striptease, auctioning off each item of clothing, one at a time, and over 3 million dollars was raised for an unnamed charity. Oracle Corp. CEO Larry Ellison gave a hilarious lecture on “How to Destroy Evidence and Make False Statements.”

  There had been a lot of drinking in the evening, and it was obviously too much booze that loosened up Fox mogul Rupert Murdoch’s tongue. He was shouting at the moon: “Who says there are 27 million slaves around the world? And where the fuck can I get one? How would anybody know it’s 27 million anyway? Do they have census takers or what? You tell me! I’ll decide!”

  Also, a screaming match broke out between Google co-founder Sergei Brin and Google CEO Eric Schmidt over that infamous cover of the New Yorker that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as the new president and first lady, a terrorist couple doing that fist-bump gesture in the Oval Office. Sergei thought it was a brilliant satirical illustration, but Eric thought it was racist and irresponsible.

  The previous year, 2007, the surprise guest was former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Now it was Steven Beschloss, the editor of a new magazine, scheduled to be launched in October 2008 and delivered to 100,000 U.S. households with an average net worth of $25 million. There were piles of preview copies scattered about.

  While Beschloss was holding court in an outdoor area, annoying mosquitoes kept buzzing around the crowd. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, yelled at him, “I guess we’ll never hear your readers whining about a mental recession. And those of your subscribers who were in the subprime mortgage industry—these mosquitoes are their fault, because, along with all the home foreclosures they’re responsible for, the stagnant water in abandoned pools turns into new breeding grounds for mosquitoes.”

  Someone yelled out, “Where are you from, ‘In-Your-Facebook?’ ” Others drowned out Zuckerberg’s apparently serious rant by singing the mogul version of a couple of good old-fashioned camp songs, “This Land Is My Land, This Land Is My Land” and “KumBuyYahoo.” I couldn’t help but notice that billionaire activist Carl Icahn snapped his fingers as if having an epiphany; a week later he ended up on Yahoo’s board of directors.

  Khan Manka explained that at these events so-called “informal” meetings between bigwigs always take place where a pair of individuals can have their discussions alone without any interruption—on the golf course, hiking along an isolated trail, fly-fishing at Silver Creek—but Manka had been privy to only one specific example that he could share.

  “Back in 1995,” he told me, “Disney honcho Michael Eisner met with Robert Iger, who was then the head of ABC. And exactly one month later, these two giant companies merged into one media megamonster. Coincidence? I don’t think so. Their deal had been sealed when Eisner and Iger exchanged friendship bracelets that they had worked on at Camp Mogul.”

  CAMPAIGN IN THE ASS

  The Denver Police Department is facing several lawsuits over confrontations with protesters at the Democratic National Convention. The officers had conducted mass arrests and detentions of 154 individuals before and during the convention. One cop, for example, was videotaped pushing a woman to the ground with his baton as he yelled, “Back up, bitch!” The police are being charged with systematically condoning violence against antiwar demonstrators.

  Now, a commemorative T-shirt created and distributed by their union, the Denver Police Protective Association, could be offered as evidence of the cops’ state of mind. The T-shirt features a menacing depiction of a gigantic, nightstick-wielding cop with a malevolent grin, towering over Denver’s downtown skyline and boasting, “We Get Up Early, to BEAT the Crowds,” along with the slogan, “2008 DNC.” The cop’s hat has the image of number 68 inside a circle with a slash going through it, an obvious reference to Re-create 68, a protest group that staged several demonstrations.

  Shirt producer Nick Rogers said that each of the 1,400 Denver officers was given a free T-shirt, and that they’re being sold for $10. He said that the police union predicts sales of about 2,000 shirts. Rogers stated that he hadn’t received any complaints about the shirt. But Glenn Spagnuolo, co-founder of Re-create 68, did in fact complain that “the members of Denver’s police union clearly have no respect for the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution.”

  Re-create 68 has demanded an investigation by officials, including the mayor and the safety manager. Spagnuolo says that “The people of Denver were assured by the city that it would respect First Amendment rights during the convention, and that the police officers were being trained to do so. The actions of police during the convention, which involved numerous violations of people’s right to freedom of speech and assembly, put the lie to those promises. And now this appalling, tasteless T-shirt shows why.”

  The Denver Police Department Operations Manual includes a Law Enforcement Code of Ethics, which begins, “As a Law Enforcement Officer, my fundamental duty is to serve mankind, to safeguard lives and property, to protect the innocent against deception, the weak against oppression or intimidation, and the peaceful against violence or disorder; and to respect the Constitutional rights of all men to liberty equality and justice.”

  Aside from the sexist wording in that opening credo, the T-shirt makes a mockery of the mission statement. Spagnuolo insists that members of his group saw those shirts before the convention, and that they reflect the brutality exhibited by Denver police officers during the convention. “We feel like police should not be celebrating violating people’s rights,” he says. “These shirts set the tone for the beating that our members took.”

  Martin Vigil, president of the Denver Police Protective Association, insists, “Nothing really happened. It wasn’t the event that the antigovernment groups anticipated, and the T-shirts are a satirical comment on that, given to officers after the event as a ‘thank you’ for a perfect convention.” The police group contends, “Those activists just don’t get the joke.”

  “Count us among those who don’t find it very funny,” stated a Denver Post editorial. “The T-shirt was supposedly a joke. ‘We get up early to beat the crowds.’ Get it? ‘Beat’ the crowds. The shirt undermines the efforts the Denver Police Department has made to boost its credibility in the community. . . . Denver police leadership has been working hard in recent years to improve both its use-of-force practices and its image within the community after several controversial shootings.”

  In any case, there’s a certain meta-irony about the name Re-create 68. Not only did the crossed-out 68 on the hat of the cop on the T-shirt refer to Re-create 68, but Re-create 68 itself was a reference to the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago where protesters were severely beaten by police.

  Moreover, at the 1996 Democratic convention in Chicago, there were T-shirts with the logo of the Chicago Police Department and the legend, “Democratic National Convenion Chicago—1996—We Kicked Your Father’s Ass in 1968—Wait ’Til You See What We Do to You!”

  That’s the trouble with a police state. The cops think it’s a good thing.

  A
friend in Denver during the convention walked past the front steps of the police department in Denver, where a lot of cops were assembled for an outdoor photo. One of them called out, “Whose streets?” The rest of the cops chanted back, “Our streets,” breaking out in laughter.

  Another friend was being hassled by a cop in New York.

  His young son muttered, “This is a police state.”

  “It’s not a police state,” the cop responded. “It’s a police world.”

  BEHIND THE INFAMOUS TWINKIE DEFENSE

  November 27, 2008, marked the thirtieth anniversary of the assassination of progressive San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, who was becoming the gay equivalent of Martin Luther King Jr. Two weeks earlier, the killer, Dan White, had resigned from the Board of Supervisors, but now, having learned the previous night that Moscone would not grant his request to be reappointed, he had decided to seek the ultimate revenge.

  Although White, a former cop, confessed shortly after the murders, he would plead not guilty. I was assigned to cover his trial for an alternative weekly, the San Francisco Bay Guardian. I’m embarrassed to admit that I said “Thank you” to the sheriff’s deputy who frisked me before I could enter the courtroom. However, this was a superfluous ritual, since any journalist who wanted to shoot White was prevented from doing so by wall-to-wall bulletproof glass.

  Defense attorney Douglas Schmidt did not want any pro-gay sentiment polluting the verdict, but he wasn’t allowed to ask potential jurors if they were gay, so instead he would ask if they had ever supported controversial causes—“like homosexual rights, for instance.” One juror came from a family of police—ordinarily, Schmidt would have craved a prospect like him for this jury—but the man mentioned, “I live with a roommate and lover.”

  Schmidt phrased his next question: “Where does he or she work?”

  The answer began, “He”—and the ball game was already over—“works at Holiday Inn.”

  Throughout the trial, White just sat there as though he had been mainlining epoxy glue. He stared directly ahead, his eyes focused on the crack between two adjacent boxes on the clerk’s desk, Olde English type identifying them as “Deft” and “Pltff” for defendant and plaintiff. He didn’t testify. Rather, he told his story to several psychiatrists hired by the defense, and they repeated those details in court.

  At a press conference, Berkeley psychiatrist Lee Coleman denounced the practice of psychiatric testimony, labeling it as “a disguised form of hearsay.”

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  The day before the trial began, the assistant district attorney slated to prosecute the case was standing in an elevator at the Hall of Justice. He heard a voice behind him speak his name: “Tom Norman, you’re a motherfucker for prosecuting Dan White.” He turned around and saw a half-dozen police inspectors. He flushed and faced the door again. These cops were his drinking buddies, but now they were all mad at him.

  “I didn’t know who said it,” he confided to the courtroom artist for a local TV station, “and I didn’t want to know.”

  One could only speculate about the chilling effect that incident had on him, perhaps engendering his sloppy presentation of the prosecution’s case. For example, in his opening statement, Norman told the jury that White had reloaded his gun in the mayor’s office, but, according to White’s confession:

  Q: And do you know how many shots you fired [at Moscone]?

  A: Uh—no, I don’t, I don’t, I out of instinct when I, I reloaded the gun, ah—you know, it’s just the training I had, you know.

  Q: Where did you reload?

  A: I reloaded in my office when, when I was—I couldn’t out in the hall.

  Which made it slightly less instinctive. Norman sought to prove that the murders had been premeditated, yet ignored this evidence of premeditation in White’s own confession. If White’s reloading of his gun had been, as he said, “out of instinct,” then he indeed would have reloaded in Moscone’s office. And if it were truly an instinctive act, then he would have reloaded again after killing Milk.

  One psychiatrist testified that White must have been mistaken in his recollection of where he reloaded. The evidence on this key question became so muddled that one juror would later recall, “It was a very important issue, but it was never determined where he reloaded—in Moscone’s office or just prior to saying, ‘Harvey, I want to talk with you.’ ”

  In his confession, White had stated, “I don’t know why I put [my gun] on.” At the trial, psychiatrists offered reasons ranging from psychological (it was “a security blanket”) to practical (for “self-defense” against a People’s Temple hit squad; this was a week after the Jonestown massacre). But, as a former police officer and member of the Police Commission told me, “An off-duty cop carrying his gun for protection isn’t gonna take extra bullets. If he can’t save his life with the bullets already in his gun, then he’s done for.”

  When White’s aide, Denise Apcar, picked him up at 10:15 that fateful morning, he didn’t come out the front door as he normally would. He emerged from the garage. He had gone down down there to put on his service revolver, a .38 special, which he always kept loaded. He opened a box of extra cartridges, which were packed in rows of five, wrapped ten of them in a handkerchief so they wouldn’t rattle, and put them into his pocket.

  At one point in the confession to his old friend and former softball coach, Police Inspector Frank Falzon, White claimed, “I was leaving the house to talk, to see the mayor, and I went downstairs to, to make a phone call, and I had my gun there.” But there was a phone upstairs, and White was home alone. His wife had already gone to the Hot Potato, a fast-food franchise he had leased. But Falzon didn’t question him about that. He neglected to pose a simple question that any kid playing detective would have asked—“Dan, who did you call?”—the answer to which could have been easily verified.

  Prosecutor Norman bungled his case and allowed the defense to use White’s confession to its own advantage. The mere transcript could never capture the sound of White’s anguish. He was like a small boy, sobbing uncontrollably because he wouldn’t be allowed to play on the Little League team. When the tape was played in court, some reporters wept, along with members of White’s family, spectators, jurors, an assistant D.A.—who had a man-sized tissue box on his table—and Dan White himself, crying both live and on tape simultaneously.

  If the prosecution hadn’t entered this tape as evidence, the defense could have done so, saving it as the final piece of evidence for dramatic effect. And yet the heart-wrenching confession was contradicted by White’s former aide, Apcar. In White’s confession, he said that after shooting Moscone, “I was going to go down the stairs, and then I saw Harvey Milk’s aide across the hall . . . and then it struck me about what Harvey had tried to do [oppose White’s reappointment], and I said, ‘Well, I’ll go talk to him.’ ” But Apcar testified that while she was driving White to City Hall, he said he wanted to talk to both Moscone and Milk.

  White had resigned as supervisor because he couldn’t support his wife and baby on a salary of $9,600 a year. He planned to devote himself full time to The Hot Potato, and felt great relief. However, he had been the swing vote, representing downtown real estate interests and the conservative Police Officers Association. With a promise of financial backing, White changed his mind and told Moscone that he wanted his job back.

  At first, Moscone said sure, a man has the right to change his mind. But there was opposition to White’s return, led by Milk, who had cut off his ponytail and put on a suit but refused to hide his sexual preference. He warned the pragmatic Moscone that giving the homophobic White his seat back would be seen as an anti-gay move in the homosexual community. White had cast the only vote against the gay rights ordinance. But even a mayor who wants to run for reelection has the right to change his mind.

  On Sunday evening, November 26, a reporter phoned White and said, “I can tell you from a very good source in the mayor’s office that y
ou definitely are not going to be reappointed. Can you comment on that?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” he replied. “I don’t know anything about that.” And he hung up.

  White stayed on the couch that night, not wanting to keep his wife awake. He didn’t get any sleep, just lay there brooding. He decided to go to City Hall on Monday morning.

  Now, Mary Ann White sat behind her husband in the front row of spectators, her Madonna-like image in direct view of the jury. Since she was scheduled to testify, prosecutor Norman could have had her excluded from the courtroom. For that matter, he could have excluded from the jury George Mintzer, an executive at the Bechtel Company, which had contributed to White’s campaign for supervisor. Mintzer was foreman of the jury.

  For Mary Ann, this trial was like a Quaker funeral where mourners share anecdotes about the deceased and you find out things you never knew about someone you’d been living with for years. The day after her own tearful testimony, she was back in the front row, taking notes on the testimony of a psychiatrist who had previously interviewed her and taken notes. So now she was writing down poignant squibs of her own recycled observations, such as “Lack of sex drive” and “Danny didn’t intend to shoot anyone.”

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  J.I. Rodale, health food advocate and publishing magnate, once claimed in an editorial in his magazine, Prevention, that Lee Harvey Oswald had been seen holding a Coca-Cola bottle only minutes after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He concluded that Oswald was not responsible for the killing because his brain was confused. He was a “sugar drunkard.” Rodale, who died of a heart attack during a taping of The Dick Cavett Show—in the midst of explaining how good nutrition guarantees a long life—called for a full-scale investigation of crimes caused by sugar consumption.

  In a surprise move, Dan White’s defense team presented a similar biochemical explanation of his behavior, blaming it on compulsive gobbling down of sugar-filled junk-food snacks. This was a purely accidental tactic. Dale Metcalf, a former member of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters who had become a lawyer, told me how he happened to be playing chess with Steven Scherr, an associate of Dan White’s attorney.