Info-Info

"Moore's style was middle-class, whereas Squeaky Fromme was a genuine cultist. Moore represented the individual derangement of the period and Squeaky the social derangement," said Starr. The assassination attempts — Fromme's in Sacramento and Moore's in San Francisco — also contributed to "an atmosphere of lawlessness" in Northern California, Starr said, compounded by such 1970s events as the Patty Hearst kidnapping, the slaying of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and the mass suicide of the Jonestown cultists.

I find it interesting that Squeaky Fromme, the most devoted of Manson's disciples - she is in prison today for bumrushing President Ford with a gun in 1975, obscurely pursuing Charlie's program of saving the Redwoods - would end up in West Virginia, where Manson was (in his words) "razed" in the towns of McMechen and Wheeling.

Sometimes the songs' plots overwhelm and dampen the music. “Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter” is arguably one of the catchiest tracks on Dworkin’s Bastards, but man is it a stupid song. The main character, Gretchen, pulls a Squeaky Fromme by pointing a gun without any bullets in the chamber at a politician. Oddly, in gun-toting America, Squeaky was arrested and sent to prison. In the UK, however, Gretchen eats lead. Turns out she sacrificed herself to get a note read on the news about how society holds us all down. The note itself is kind of catchy; the steps this Catcher in the Rye enthusiast took to get it on the air are kind of juvenile. But while “Daughter” is the Sorrows of Young Werther of folk-punk songs -- romantically suicidal to the point of idiocy -- it goes out on a rousing note.