Dan White - an American tragedy

After I did my post about the the movie Milk, I took a look at some other reviews and found this in Roger Ebert's review of Milk:

His most fateful relationship was with Dan White, a seemingly straight member of the Board of Supervisors, a Catholic who said homosexuality was a sin and campaigned with his wife, kids and the American flag. An awkward alliance formed between Milk and White, who was probably gay and used their areas of political agreement as a beard. "I think he's one of us," Milk confided. The only gay supervisor, Milk was the only supervisor invited to the baptism of White's new baby. White was an alcoholic who all but revealed his sexuality to Milk during a drunken tirade, became unbalanced, resigned his position and on Nov. 27, 1978, walked into City Hall and assassinated Milk and Mayor George Moscone.

I also found out that White later confessed that he had intended to kill two other politicians the day he killed Moscone and Milk.

It was premeditated murder.

The following dialogue is quoted from "DAN WHITE'S LAST CONFESSION" by Mike Weiss (published September 18, 1998 in the San Jose Mercury News - Falzon was one the cops who had investigated White's killings):

"I really lost it that day," White said.

"You can say that again," Falzon answered.

"No. I really lost it. I was on a mission. I wanted four of them."

"Four?" Falzon said.

"Carol Ruth Silver--she was the biggest snake of the bunch.

And Willie Brown," White continued. "He was masterminding the whole thing."

White also confessed that he had intended to kill himself, but was unable to do it. Falzon believed what he was told, but saw no sense in revealing the confession at the time. However, I think this new information tends to refute the popular opinion that homophobia was a motive in Milk's murder.

In 1998, Falzon decided to expose the shocking truth that he had kept secret for thirteen years. He contacted reporter Mike Weiss who had closely followed the story since the beginning. Weiss and Falzon had spent numerous hours discussing and arguing the details of the story which Weiss published as the book "DOUBLE PLAY" in 1984. So it made sense that Falzon would choose to share his secret with Weiss so many years later.

In the movie, White's character isn't fully explored. No surprise since the movie is about Milk. White is portrayed as a fairly simple-minded all American boy next door who was an alcoholic and became deranged. Too two-dimensional. So I decided to take a look at White's bio.

From Wikipedia:

Daniel James "Dan" White (September 2, 1946 – October 21, 1985) was a San Francisco supervisor who assassinated San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, on November 27, 1978, at City Hall. In a controversial verdict that led to the coining of the legal slang "Twinkie Defense," White was convicted of the manslaughter rather than the murder of Milk and Moscone. Soon after serving a sentence of five years, Dan White returned to San Francisco and committed suicide two years later.

...

Daniel James White was born in San Francisco, the second of 10 children. He was raised by working-class parents in a Roman Catholic household. He attended Riordan High School. He was valedictorian of his class. He enlisted in the Army in 1965 and served in the Vietnam War before being discharged in 1972 and returning to San Francisco to work as a police officer. He quit the force after stopping another cop from beating a handcuffed black prisoner.

He then worked as a firefighter. A rescue of a woman and her baby from a seventh-floor apartment in the Geneva Towers by White was covered by The San Francisco Chronicle. Due to his background, city newspapers referred to him as "an all-American boy"

...

In 1977, White was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors as a Democrat from District 8, which included several neighborhoods near the southeastern limits of San Francisco. At this time, supervisors were elected by district and not "at-large," as they had been before and would be again in the 1980s and '90s. He had strong support from the police and firefighter's unions. His district was described by The New York Times as "a largely white, middle-class section that is hostile to the growing homosexual community of San Francisco. [...] As a supervisor, Mr. White made it clear that he saw himself as the board's defender of the home, the family and religious life against homosexuals, pot smokers and cynics."

...

Despite their personal differences, White and Harvey Milk initially had several areas of political agreement and they reportedly worked well together. Milk was one of three supervisors invited to the baptism of White's new baby. As well, White persuaded Dianne Feinstein to appoint Milk chairman of the Streets and Transportation Committee. White personally held traditional Catholic attitudes about homosexuality, but Milk suspected that White was actually closeted, even though no actual evidence exists to support this.

The Catholic Church proposed a facility for juvenile offenders who had committed murder, arson, rape, and other crimes in White's district in April 1978. White was strongly opposed, telling a local Catholic priest in response that "I'll fuck you". Milk supported the Church, and this difference led to a painful falling out between the two.

White held a mixed record on gay rights issues, both opposing the Briggs Initiative and voting against a Ordinance prohibiting anti-gay housing and employment discrimination.

...

On November 10, 1978, White resigned his seat as supervisor. As reasons, he cited his dissatisfaction with the corrupt inner-workings of San Francisco city politics, as well as the difficulty in making a living without a police officer's or firefighter's salary, neither of which jobs he could legally hold while serving as supervisor. He had opened a potato restaurant at Pier 39, which had failed to become profitable. On November 14, however, he reversed his position after his supporters lobbied him to withdraw his resignation and seek reappointment from San Francisco mayor George Moscone.

Moscone initially agreed to White's request, but later refused the reappointment at the urging of Milk and others who felt White was resisting their progressive agenda. On November 27, 1978, White went to San Francisco City Hall to meet with Moscone and make a final plea to get his job back. He arrived that day carrying a loaded gun, with 10 extra rounds of ammunition, and snuck into the building through a window, thereby circumventing the metal detectors of the recently installed security system. Upon entering Moscone's office, White began to plead to be reinstated as a supervisor, but Moscone turned down his request. White responded to this by shooting and killing Moscone. White then reloaded his weapon and walked over to Milk's office and shot him five times, killing him; he fired the final shot at very close range. He then fled City Hall and turned himself in at the Northern Police Station where he had been an officer. White recorded a tearful confession, stating, "I just shot him."

...

At his trial, White's defense argued that his mental state at the time of the killings was one of diminished capacity due to depression; therefore, they argued, he was not capable of premeditating his act of violence, and thus was not legally guilty of first-degree murder. Forensic psychiatrist Martin Blinder testified that White was suffering from depression and pointed to several behavioral symptoms of that depression, including the fact that White had gone from being highly health-conscious to consuming sugary foods and drinks. When the prosecution played a recording of White's confession, several jurors wept as they listened to what was described as "a man pushed beyond his endurance." Many people familiar with city hall claimed that it was common to enter through the window to save time. A police officer, and friend of White's, claimed to reporters that several officials carried weapons at this time and speculated that White carried the extra ammunition as a habit that police officers abide to. The jury found White guilty of voluntary manslaughter rather than first degree murder. Outrage within San Francisco's gay community over the resulting seven-year sentence sparked the city's White Night Riots; general disdain for the outcome of the court case led to the elimination of California's "diminished capacity" law.

...

White served five years of his seven-year sentence at Soledad State Prison and was paroled January 6, 1984. Fearing he might be murdered in retaliation for his crimes, California State Corrections Officials secretly transported him to Los Angeles, where he served a year's parole. White's release prompted another round of demonstrations; protesters still outraged by the brevity of his sentence publicly ate Twinkies, implying that they themselves might not be responsible for any violence they engaged in. After satisfying the terms of his parole, White indicated he wanted to return to his lifelong home of San Francisco; this prompted Mayor Dianne Feinstein, who feared for her safety, to issue a public statement formally asking White not to return. Nevertheless, White did move back to San Francisco and attempted to restore his life with his wife and children. His marriage soon disintegrated.

On October 21, 1985, less than two years after his release from prison, White committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning in his garage by running a garden hose from the exhaust pipe to the inside of his car. White had been listening to a recording of Paddy Reilly's rendition of "The Town I Loved So Well" on the car's cassette player.

"The Town I Loved So Well" says a lot to me about Dan White. White was a boy in San Francisco in the Fifties and Sixties. SF in those days was half the size it is now; a small comfortable livable city. There are still remnants of that old SF there but they are disappearing. The places that catered to the working-class like the complex of ten heated swimming pools enclosed under glass near the Cliff House, the fun fair on La Playa and the ice-rink in the Sunset District are all gone.

The Sunset District epitomizes White. I lived there from 1993 till 2003 in a small beach cottage that I bought two blocks from Ocean Beach. Built in 1926, it was one of the first houses on a vast expanse of dunes which stretched for miles inland from the Pacific Ocean. Golden Gate Park was built on these dunes.

After World War ll, a pharmacist by the name of Doelger, bought up huge tracts of these dunes and built hundreds of two-bedroomed row houses for the returning soldiers. They sold for $5,000. When I bought my house in 1993, the Doelger houses were beyond my means as they were selling for $300,000. (I bought my cottage for $160,000 - the cheapest house in the Sunset.) Doelger houses now sell for $800,000 each.

What happened? Lots of change. White saw the beginning of it. Most of the people who bought those Doelger houses in the Sunset District in the Forties and Fifties were working-class Irish or Italian. There were Irish and Italian clubs with huge fancy halls, Irish pubs, home-style Italian restaurants. Up until the mid Seventies, the Sunset was Dan White's "The Town I Loved So Well." I've seen lots of video footage and photos of SF in the Fifties and Sixties when men still wore suits and hats and women wore hats and gloves to go shopping.

White didn't live to see just how much San Francisco did change. A few of the Irish and Italians are still there but, a big Asian influx started in the late Seventies and the Sunset District is now 75% Asian, mostly Chinese. White was alive when the other Irish neighborhood, the Castro, became the gay ghetto. The Castro was a pretty rundown area in the early Seventies. First hippies moved in. Then gays began to buy up rundown houses and gentrify the neighborhood. Most of the Irish left and the hippies moved to the Haight.

The Irish and Italians of the Sunset started leaving when the Asians started to arrive. They sold their $5,000 Doelger houses to the Asians for $250,000 and moved to the suburbs of Marin, the East Bay or the Peninsula.

Until the Seventies, San Francisco was pretty homogenous. Dan White saw the first splintering with the rise of the hippy and gay sub-cultures that pitted citizens against each other. He resented their intrusion into his heretofore cozy town that he loved so well. I wonder how he would have handled the Asian influx. Would he, like most of his Irish relatives, have moved to the burbs and lived a comfortable, contented and prosperous life?

That's what this "all American boy" seemed to be destined for. What went wrong? Was White born with a fatal flaw? Or was he just not able to adapt to changes? Either way it is a tragedy.

Milk

We watched the movie tonight. It was the first of the Oscar movies to be released on DVD probably because it was a box-office flop but it really is a good movie. I can't stand Sean Penn but he deserved an Oscar for his performance.

I arrived in San Francisco in 1978. On November 18th 1978, the Jonestown Massacre took place. Then Harvey Milk was assassinated by Dan White on 27th November. I lived through the aftermath of these two horrors and was there for White's trial, his "Twinkie defense," his conviction for manslaughter (for which he got 8 years but did only 5) and the "White Night Riots."

The movie covers the last 8 years of Milk's life. I never like Milk much. Even this movie which portrays Milk quite romantically, shows what an obnoxious person he could be. Mayor Moscone, who was also murdered by White, at one time accused Milk of being like a "Boss Tweed" or Mayor Daly. Milk had a distinct tendency to bullying and extortion, like most Leftist agitators.

Milk was a loud brash New York Jew in a very laid-back San Francisco. White was a pretty simple Irish cop with old-fashioned values. Milk represented everything that White feared: the destruction of a comfortable middle-class life in a fairly small and comfortable city.

Milk got a real boost politically when the Teamsters asked him to bring the gay community on board with their strike against Coors and he became famous beyond San Francisco when he mounted opposition to Prop 6, the Briggs Initiative, which was inspired by Anita Bryant's anti-gay activism. Prop 6 was defeated but not because of Milk but because Reagan opposed it.

Even though I did not agree with the White Night Riots, I did understand the outrage. How could White get off with manslaughter when he first murdered Moscone and then pumped five bullets into Milk the last of which was fired into the back of his head execution-style?

White was not a sane man. Sadly, while in prison, he fathered a deformed and handicapped child and then, two years after he got out of prison and had returned to San Francisco, he killed himself in his garage.

The movie probably isn't of interest to anyone who did not live through the events but, for those interested, it's a fairly honest and accurate depiction of those events.

Willa Cather

Tonight we watched Song of the Lark, a movie about a woman who is born and raised in a small town in Colorado and becomes a famous soprano in Europe. We'd actually seen it before but I often forget that I've seen a movie and rent it again.

This time round I noticed that it was based on a novel by Willa Cather. Because I was born in a former British colony, most of the English literature that I was taught in school was British: Austen, Dickens, Eliot, Hardy, Lawrence, Forster and Huxley with a few "great" Americans like Melville, Twain and James thrown in. So I missed out reading the "middle-brow" American writers like Cather.

When I first heard of Cather I asked my American friends about her. Their almost universal opinion was "Don't bother!" So I didn't. But, after seeing Song of the Lark again, I decided that maybe I should bother; so I Googled her. Now I understand why my friends in San Francisco didn't think she was any good: Cather was politically conservative and extolled the traditional frontier values of the West.

That made me wonder why she was not honored by conservatives. Could it be because she never married; that all of her most intimate friendships were with women (such as the Swedish-American opera singer Olive Fremstad whose life inspired Song of the Lark); that she sometimes dressed like a man and liked to be called "William"; that she had a long-term relationship with the New York editor Edith Lewis from 1912 until her death in 1947?

I think it's time for me to read some of Cather's novels.

PS Surprisingly, when novelist Sinclair Lewis won the Nobel Prize in Literature, he said that Cather should have won the honor. Lewis of course is famous for his anti-capitalist satire Babbitt, and Elmer Gantry which depicts evangelical Christians as hypocrites. No wonder he was the first American to win the Nobel for Literature.

The wow! in chihuahua

We watched "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" tonight. The movie sure puts the the wow! in chihuahua. It's the funnest (if not funniest) movie I've seen this year. I was expecting it to be funny and it was for about 10 minutes and, after that, it's kind of scary and sad. I even cried a few times.

You know, I always despised chihuahuas as useless "rats on strings" until 15 years ago when the woman from whom I had already adopted several rescued dogs, Michelle, phoned one day and asked me to adopt a chihuahua puppy which had been found on the streets of the rough Mexican Mission District in San Francisco. It had a broken nose and tail and was slated to be killed by the dog pound because they regarded it as an unadoptable vicious psycho street bitch. She was about 6 months old and had been physically and psychologically traumatized by street life.

Her story so upset me that I agreed to take her without seeing her. An hour later, there was a knock on the front door and there was Michelle with this little 4 pound pup, scared, beat-up and trembling. She handed me the dog who immediately snuggled into my neck and the rest is history. That was 15 years ago and now I am facing the end of her short life. I'm praying that she dies in her sleep and I don't have to shoot her.

Below: Corrie (short for Coriander) at the ripe old age of nearly 15 - with cataracts.





















I've written about her before here. (For other dogs that I have known see Part one - Chummy and Part two - Punchy.)

Soon after I fell in love with Corrie, I adopted another chihuahua from Michelle. He had had his left thigh-bone removed due to osteonecrosis and had been adopted out several times unsuccessfully. That's Herbie who is now 12 years old. (One day I will write his story.) The two main dogs in "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" could be Corrie and Herbie.

Now that they are both old and nearing death, I've told Chas and Andy that I will never adopt another chihuahua not because I despise them (as I used to) but because I love them too much. They are smarter than any other dog that I've ever known. They are also braver and more fearless than any other dog that I've ever known. Problem is their smallness and cuteness. They are so much like babies and too adorable. And it's just too painful to be that sentimental about a dog.

Did you know that Chihuahuas, like human babies, have moleras, or a soft spots in their skulls, and they are the only breed of dog to be born with an incomplete skull? And, like humans, the moleras do fill in after six months.

Chihuahuas have an interesting history:

The developmental history of the Chihuahua is very difficult to trace and is based largely on speculation and theory, however through folklore, legend and archeological finds, there is sufficient evidence to prove that it is without doubt an ancient breed originating from Pre-Columbian Mexico, and it is believed to predate any other breed of dog in the Americas. The most common theory and most likely is that Chihuahuas are descended from the Techichi, a companion dog favoured by the Toltecs and that the modern dog developed through breeding with miniaturised Chinese dogs brought to the Americas by the Spanish Conquistadors.

Historical records of the Techichi, which were thought to hunt in packs, can only be traced as far back as the ninth century but it is highly likely that this is the Chihuahua's native Mexican ancestor. Evidence of this is that the remains of dogs closely resembling, but slightly larger than the average Chihuahua have been found in such places as the Great Pyramid of Cholula, which dates back to the 2nd century BC and predates the 16th century. There is also evidence to suggest that the Techichi may also predate the Mayans. After the Toltecs were conquered by the Aztecs, it is believed that this early ancestor of the Chihuahua was adopted as a symbol of the upper classes and it has been suggested that they were used in religious ceremonies for the absolution of sins and to guide the sprits of the dead. In terms of size, the present day Chihuahua is much smaller than its ancestors, a change thought to be due to the introduction of miniaturized Chinese dogs, such as the Chinese Crested Dog, into South America by the Spanish.

Corrie:

















Herbie: