Fair Game
GOODMAN, WALTER
Fair Game BY WALTER GOODMAN Up Charley, Up Alice DEAR FRIEND: As one who has managed to get his name on mailing lists for the freedom of Angela Davis, Huey Newton, the Catonsville Nine, the...
...Fair Game BY WALTER GOODMAN Up Charley, Up Alice DEAR FRIEND: As one who has managed to get his name on mailing lists for the freedom of Angela Davis, Huey Newton, the Catonsville Nine, the Harris-burg Six, the Chicago Seven, and Spiro Agnew's daughter, you will not want to miss out on The Committee to Secure Justice for Charles Man-son and Alice Crimmins...
...From Houston to Anaheim chapters of The Friends of Charley Manson sprung up...
...In a time of 'Women's Lib' and 'Gay Lib,' how reassuring it is to witness the power of an honest-to-God short-haired, heterosexual relationship...
...A typical incident: "One sweltering Friday night in August, it took me two and a half hours to make it from 38th Street to Rego Park, and my radiator overheated...
...Thirty-six Southern congressmen signed a Declaration of Conscience—-"We do not in this Republic condemn a man for doing his duty as he may see it...
...The Vision of Charles Manson, a small volume of prophetic utterances published by Random House, was quickly adopted by counterculture studies in high schools everywhere...
...Many drivers' licenses were burned at that meeting, and a Free Mrs...
...The Veterans of State Hospitals—Lunatic Lib— lobbied the halls of Congress for the prohibition of strait jackets and community control of sanity tests, which they charged were weighted in favor of sane people...
...The commandant of the Ohio National Guard ordered that copies of the trial transcript be issued to all commissioned and noncommissioned officers...
...The issue might never have been resolved had not Charles Manson himself written from his jail cell, "I tend my hand in fellowship and love to the old sonsabitches who put me here, may they rot of cancer...
...Man-son's second book, The Ensanguining of America, shot to the top of the bestseller lists within three days of publication...
...Half the proceeds are earmarked for the ecology movement...
...If they are blameless, then who shall blame them...
...Cast No Stone SYMPATHY for Mrs...
...If they warrant blame, then we must blame ourselves...
...The president of Yale said at the dedication of a new law building that he doubted that a woman who had killed her children could get a fair trial in this country under prevailing conditions...
...Compared to me, Jesus was a brute...
...Tracked down by reporters, he explained: "I can't stand having my kids calling me an Establishment pig all day long...
...The Transit Workers Union asked for special pay for members obliged to go into the high-risk area...
...Crimmins denied everything...
...Friend, I invite you to join in our campaign...
...The Vice President threw a convention of the American Gas Association into stitches when he described the so-called "victims" of Manson's endeavor as "pot-peddling, West Coast pseudoswingers...
...The Friends of Charley Manson didn't like the smell of the phrase...
...In a time of disintegrating family relationships," said the Reverend Carl Mc-Intyre at a rally sponsored by the American Legion auxiliary of Newark, "we can all draw a lesson from the stick-togetherness of that handful of disciplined, dedicated souls at their Golgotha...
...The Bronx Chamber of Commerce urged the sponsors of the Forest Hills tennis tournament to move to Yankee Stadium...
...Crimmins Committee was set up on the spot...
...The Long Island Railroad stopped running for a couple of days, but, to be honest, it is not certain whether this was part of the protest movement or normal nonoperating procedure...
...Traffic was disrupted when toll-takers at the Triboro Bridge and the Midtown Tunnel shut down operations one afternoon to protest Queens...
...Blessed am I, for I am a peacemaker...
...That's the result of a Godfearing education...
...The Friends of Charley Manson were especially moved by the indomitable spirit shown throughout the trial by the young folks...
...This multi-partisan group, formed recently under the co-sponsorship of the Honorable John C. Stennis and the Honorable Bella Abzug, is perhaps the brightest blossom produced by the spirit of national reconciliation which has fallen upon the land this spring...
...Then events moved swiftly...
...A carefully drawn manifesto, entitled No Man Is an Island, was released to the press: "Whatever the deeds which Charles Manson and Alice Crimmins are alleged to have committed, the crucial element in both their cases is that they are human beings and Americans...
...The Free Mrs...
...The Reverend Mclntyre predicted a fresh upsurge of faith as a result of Charles Manson's sacrifice...
...In the early stages of the case, the President made it crystal-clear that whatever the pressures brought to bear upon him, he would not interfere while the appeals process took its proper course, and, furthermore, as a Quaker he was unalterably opposed to Crucifixion...
...It is we who tolerate Queens...
...Martha Mitchell telephoned the Los Angeles Free Press late one night to tell the undercover fbi agent who answered that some people were better off dead...
...As the literary critic for the Saturday Review observed, "Manson provides a lively guide to the intentions of the now generation...
...AS EVER, RAMSEY CLARK...
...His words, set to his own music, shot to the top of the Cashbox 100, and Mick Jagger was signed to play him in a cinema verite production by Jean-Luc Godard...
...A snappy editorial in the New York Daily News compared Charles Man-son's conviction to the Soviet purge trials...
...The editors of the Village Voice elected Manson to the Pantheon of Free Spirits, heretofore reserved for the young people who blew themselves up on West 11th Street...
...William Kunstler, speaking at the same event, urged law students to go into demolition...
...She also confided that she had the feeling somebody was tapping her phone...
...If we blame ourselves, are they not then blameless...
...Establishment pig!' See how you like it...
...Insofar as their actions were in accord with the best traditions of American life, they shed credit on us all, and so surely do not deserve punishment...
...The Dean's words were widely reprinted: "It is we who created Queens...
...Following a series of delicate negotiations, the Manson and Crimmins groups came together to form The Committee to Secure Justice, Etc., familiarly known as Save Our Murderers...
...Shame on us...
...Let us make it clear to the world that on one ground we are together: That there is nobody in this country, however cracked, who does not have the right to have a committee named after him...
...That's what it means to be an American...
...Insofar as their actions are not in our best traditions, that too must reflect upon all of us...
...What Guardsman's heart will not dance a little," he asked, "at the thought of those plucky little ladies going about their assigned tasks despite flak from weak-kneed onlookers...
...Crimmins emerged first on the West Side of Manhattan, when several score former residents of Queens held a public meeting at which they gave hair-raising personal accounts of the traffic jams they had endured on the Long Island Expressway...
...In the beginning, you may recall, there were two separate and somewhat antagonistic committees...
...Support was not long in developing...
...Clergymen Concerned About Queens put out a powerful statement: "This is the least of the atrocities that have been committed in that borough, beginning on the morning 300 years ago when resident Indians were denied their fishing rights in Jamaica Bay by racist trappers...
...Establishment pig...
...tv rights have already been sold, and next season will bring the situation comedy, "Charley and Alice," featuring Henry Fonda and Ruby Keeler, to your home screen...
...The clergymen called for immediate withdrawal...
...Coming Together THE FIRST tentative movements toward accommodation by the two camps nearly foundered on a point of principle: Were Charles Manson and Alice Crimmins political prisoners...
...As attention was drawn to the ongoing injustice, support poured in from Americans of every rank...
...The Friends found it heartening when, after the appearance of a number of relevant polls, Press Secretary Ronald Zieg-ler clarified the President's crystal-clear stand, saying: "We have a tradition in this country of respecting the man who marches to a different drummer...
...The Dean of the Washington Cathedral contributed an eloquent essay to the Op-Ed page of the New York Times, entitled, We Are All Disgusting...
...Crimmins movement...
...A lengthy article in the New York Review of Books showed the similarity between Mrs...
...Crimmins' ordeal and the Reichstag trials...
...We have a lot to learn from them...
...Then he brought down the house with "besexed, besotted, bedraggled bleeding-hearts...
...As pressure built, the Borough President of Queens snuck off to Great Neck...
...That's not the result of a permissive education, my friends...
...Crimmins Committee held that every prisoner is a political prisoner...
...The intellectual community was at the fore of the Free Mrs...
...A fringe group was quickly disowned when they announced plans to honor Charley Manson with appropriate ceremonies at dead of night at isolated ranches throughout the Southwest...
Vol. 54 • May 1971 • No. 11
