Mansonstravaganza Fun Murder Anniversary Party Week Continues!

Best theme party week EVER. Today we find:

• Squeaky Fromme is getting out of jail soon! Unlike Leslie Van Houten, who has been repentant and rehabilitated for decades, Squeaky is still as nutty as they come and, along with her BFF Sandra Goode, declared herself a nun. So, yeah, she tried to kill the president of the United States, and she gets let out of jail while Leslie, who didn't kill anybody, must be kept away forever. Somebody didn't hire the right publicist.
• Speaking of which, better late than never, parts two and three of John Waters' reminiscences of his friendship with Van Houten are up at the Huffington Thing.
• NPR interviewed Waters about writing about Leslie Van Houten.
• ABC News in LA came up with the awesome title "40 Years After the Fear" for their celebration.

Hey, It's the Big Tate-LaBianca Murders 40th Birthday Party! So Here's a Picture I Drew of Charles Manson on My iPhone! Yay!

Helter Skelter Anniversary Celebration Continues...

Recently we snickered when we learned that the organization behind that whole "C Street" house of adulterous Christian lawmakers was called "The Family." Hilarious, right? And now there's a whole new book about the organization, pictured above, left. They are so sinister! Haw, no, not really. But since it's the Big Manson Anniversary, let's look back at another great book with the same name, Ed Sanders' brilliant 1971 exposé of the Manson family, shown above, right.

At first blush, this is just a funny coincidence. But when you think about it, they're really not all that different:

• Both "families" prefer their women to be quiet, obedient.
• Both groups are composed of "lost" types seeking spiritual guidance.
• Both groups seek that guidance from a white, male, bearded messiah.
• Both authors have been featured in Rolling Stone (Sanders as a member of the Fugs, Sharlet as a contributing editor).
• Both stories suggest that certain cult-like activities might make sense within a group, but don't always go over so well in the "real world."
• Both "families" plotted to touch off an apocalyptic race war by committing gruesome, high-profile murders they thought would be blamed on blacks.*

*So far, this has not actually been confirmed that the C Street group has done this, but I wouldn't put it past them.

Still and Forever in the News

The 20th Century's murderous little jack-in-the-box, Charles Manson, pops up when you least expect him, but often enough that he can practically be thought of as a continuity device.

• Be sure to read, at the Huffington Thing, John Waters' essay on Leslie Van Houten and why it's ridiculous that she's still in prison. It's an entertaining, thought provoking trip down Manson Memory Lane, which Waters has done many times before, but is welcome to as often as he likes. Essential reading.
• Last week I got all excited by the prospects of Chuckles hooking up with hairdo scofflaw Phil Spector in prison. After all, there's only one degree of separation between them, thanks to the Beach Boys. This story is probably spurious, but it filled my head with visions of Manson crooning "Be My Baby" accompanied by legions of sweet, vacant looking background singers with long, straight hair.
• On Friday, Greta von Whatshername takes the week off Sarah Palin to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Tate/LaBianca murders. Guest stars will include Vincent Bugliosi and Sharon Tate's stupid sister.
• The Guardian, on Sunday, caught up with Linda Kasabian.
• The New York Times rehashed everything.
• Bringing everything full circle, the Baltimore Sun wrote about John Waters writing about Charles Manson.

Bill O'Reilly is Totally the New Marilyn Manson

Uh oh, if this guy at the Huffington Thing™ is right, and Tiller's murderer mounts an "O'Reilly defense,"then Bill O'Reilly is about to have his bad publicity nightmare to end all bad publicity nightmares.

Part of me, of course, delights at the prospect of Bill O'Reilly's squirms-to-come as every single other media outlet in the Western world continues to obsess over this story, an obsession which will quadruple if the concept really does end up in the trial. It'll be a PR disaster, terrible for Fox, and O'Reilly will suffer. For a little while.

But the other part of me, the less vindictive, less mean-spirited part of me, knows that this is all bullshit, an exploitative sideshow, exactly like blaming school shootings on Marilyn Manson and Grand Theft Auto.

Ooh... that sounds like fun.

*runs off to listen to Marilyn Manson and play Grand Theft Auto*

Quickie: And the Award for Imaginative and Unexpected Charles Manson References Goes To...

...Jesse Ventura:

KING: You were a Navy SEAL.

VENTURA: That’s right. I was water boarded, so I know — at SERE School, Survival Escape Resistance Evasion. It was a required school you had to go to prior to going into the combat zone, which in my era was Vietnam. All of us had to go there. We were all, in essence — every one of us was water boarded. It is torture.

KING: What was it like?

VENTURA: It’s drowning. It gives you the complete sensation that you are drowning. It is no good, because you — I’ll put it to you this way, you give me a water board, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I’ll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders.

Political Piggy indeed.

Lindsey Lohan and Charles Manson: Together at Last

Actual screenshot from E! Online!:

OMG, a new movie called Manson Girls! That title is so totally cute! I've long lamented that the Manson Family hasn't gotten the musical comedy treatment*, but maybe this'll be it! Yay! Please hire John Waters to direct.

*The wonderfully bad TV remake of Helter Skelter came close: in one probably wisely deleted scene included as a bonus on the DVD, Susan Atkins breaks into torrid go-go dancing when she's booked into the women's prison. Hott!

The Gift That Keeps On Giving

From left to right, Larry Harris, Debra Tate, sister of murder victim Sharon Tate and Jean Harris watch scientists and investigators work behind the abandoned Barker Ranch house, Friday, Feb. 22, 2008 in the Panamint Mountains west of Death Valley National Park, Calif. Charles Manson and his followers retreated to the Barker Ranch after a killing spree during the summer of 1969. The high desert wasteland outside of town hides the ranch where a paranoid Charles Manson and his followers holed up after their orgy of murder nearly four decades ago. Now, as then, few venture into this alkaline wilderness _ gold-diggers, outlaws, loners content to live and let live. But a determined group of outsiders recently made the trek. They were in search of more evidence of death. (AP Photo/Gary Kazanjian)

Media superstar and beloved symbol of the 1960s Charles Manson is in the news again, so that's always superfun. Will they find more bodies at Barker Ranch? Stay tuned as the ever-popular Manson Show™ makes an unexpected return to the programming schedule!

EDIT - Kudos to AP for the caption clarification:

**ADDS TO EXPLAIN MAGAZINE WAS BROUGHT TO HOUSE AND PLACED ON TABLE BY INVESTIGATORS SEARCHING THE AREA FOR CLANDESTINE GRAVESITES**

One of These Days, She's Going to Twist Them Legs Right Off

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meets with Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos at the the State Department in Washington October 29, 2007. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque (UNITED STATES)

Poor Condi has had a rough time lately, so it's nice to see her settling back into the State Department's matching armchairs where she can just chat and do nothing. And you know, I've been looking at these shots for so long now, that sometimes I find myself twisting my legs together in sympathetic response! Ow, my crotch!

And I know it's unseemly to laugh at my own jokes, but I've just got to repost the JibJab thing I made for Wonkette last week, but every time I see Dr. Ferragamo dancing the Charleston with Charles Manson, I just collapse into giggles:

Guest-Blogging Roundup

Ha ha! Heard any good ones, lately? It was loads of nerve-wracking fun blogging at Wonkette yesterday and today. My goodness, people certainly got a kick out of the Larry Craig scoop! And some people maybe vomited! Wheee! I didn't figure out how to get a byline (I'm lazy and kinda stupid that way), so here are links to most of the other stories I wrote:

• Chris Dodd has really, really white hair, because of Republicans!
• Does the Huckabee messenger bag come in pink?
• The FTC hates hippies, natural produce.
• Dana Perino looks at the sunny side of global warming.
• Condi and Charles Manson: together at last!*
• California wildfires? Blame the fags.
• Obama primes homo grudge-match.
• Bloggers and college students more dangerous than terrorists!
• Nap time for Dick Cheney.
• Don't ask Condi about Iraqi corruption. She'll get mad!
• Be a bloodthirsty mercenary, or look just like one!
• National Slut Day? Yes, please!
• Obama's "ex-gay" gospel singer maybe not so ex-gay after all!
• Lesbians can't get married in Florida unless they're incarcerated.
• A modest proposal for Jonathan Demme to improve his boring Jimmy Carter movie.
• FEMA pretends to have a press conference.
• David Brooks claims he's outsourced his brain, and I believe him!
• Hello? Washington Post? This is how you write a gossip item.
• Condi poses with unhappy dead guy.
• French people don't exactly love Donald Rumsfeld.
• Laura Bush: Islamofascist asskisser.
• Did the CIA give eBay positive feedback?
  

And there are a couple more which haven't been posted yet, but I'll update the links when they do. Phew! Holy cow, did I really write all that?


*This effort was denounced by a Wonkette commentor thusly: "God, how dumb. Doesn't even rise to the level of witless."

UPDATE: All these links went dead when Wonkette changed servers. They have been fixed.

"Manson Guilty," Nixon Declares

Remember that headline during the "Helter Skelter" trial? Charlie managed to grab a copy of the LA Times and waved it in the jury's face, nearly causing a mistrial.

That's what I was thinking about when I read this. Is Bush actually trying, unlike Nixon, to throw Tom Delay's trial?