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THE_LEGENDARY_TWINKIE

                                                   February 24, 2006
Periodically in on-line discussions of legal       February 20, 2017
events, someone or other will bring up the
now legendary "Twinkie Defense".
                                             
Once upon a time, in a context now nearly lost in     
the mists of memory, a defense attorney tried to      
argue that his client was out of his mind because     
he had been so upset that he was eating nothing       
but junk food that day.                               
                                                      
   This led to the jibe                              
   about how this was "the     
   Twinkie Defense", which    Similar to
   is now up at urban         the way the      If you look at the actual
   legend status.  It's       McDonalds        events of the McDonald's
   one of the references      incident with    coffee incident more closely,
   people make when they      burns from       that argument evaporates, e.g.
   want to sneer at a         hot coffee--     the burns were serious third
   legal system out of                         degree burns, and the place
   control.                                    had been cited for this
                                               before: apparently serving
                                               coffee at near-boiling
To restore                                     temperature was a strategy for
the context:                                   discouraging gulp-and-get-refill.
                               
This was during the trial of Dan                                 But obviously
White, after he assasinated two                                  corporations
people: the mayor of San                                         need *more*
Fransico and a member of the                                     protections
board of supervisors:                                            from liability
George Moscone and Harvey Milk.                                  claims, eh?
Both gay, both left-wing.              
                                  And this was back in
                                  the 1970s when being
                                  out of the closet was
Dan White himself was a           still a pretty serious
former member of the board        thing-- and getting
of supervisors, he had just       elected to office while
resigned, then regretted it       out of the closet, that
and asked for his job back--      was unheard of.
Moscone, at Milk's urging,     
had turned him down.                       Out conservative friends in the
                                           audience are likely to point out
This was a largely pragmatic               at this stage that Moscone was
calculation to pull the board              elected with the assistance of
further left: Dan White was                of some very odd political allies:
conservative.                              he had James Jones and his church
                                           on his side--
He was also a former cop.        
                                           The guys who        You might wonder
  This is the guy                          later moved off     what the point
  who managed to get                       to Ghanna, and      is of bringing
  a (relatively)                           when confronted     this up in this
  light sentence.                          by a visiting       context.  Surely
  Attributing this                         US Senator,         the idea is not
  to "the Twinkie                          murdered him        to *defend*
  Defense" is a big                        and then            Dan White?
  stretch: he was                          engaged in a
  *connected*.                             mass suicide.       I think the
                                                               impulse is
  The suspicion is                         San Francisco       more like:
  strong that there                        politics was        this is a
  were people who                          pretty fucking      story about
  thought he had done                      weird in those      a crazy
  them a big favor by                      days.  Maybe it     conservative,
  eliminating Moscone                      still is.           so we need
  and Milk.                                                    to say
                                                               something
                                                               about crazy
        After the decision                                     lefties.
        was announced there    
        were riots in the                                      (Jan 17, 2019)
        streets, a police                     But then-- it could be I'm
        car was burned...                     giving them too much credit: "If
                                              only we had *more* conservatives
        They call that                        with guns assasinating lefties."
        "The White Night".                    sounds like the Republican base
                                              these days.
                              
                              
                              

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