Season of the Assassins

If you thought all those assassination anniversary
posts would end after November 22 was over, think again: We’re
just moving on to another assassination. Look what happened 35
years ago today:

On November 27, 1978, the ninth day after Jonestown,
Daniel James White, ex-cop, former paratrooper, and superjock, an
All-American Boy from everybody’s favorite city, strapped on his
police special .38, loaded his pockets with extra hollow-point
bullets that explode upon impact, and went to San Francisco City
Hall to settle some political differences.

That’s from Warren Hinckle’s great piece “Dan White’s San
Francisco,” published in the libertarian magazine Inquiry
in the wake of White’s murder of Mayor George Moscone and City
Supervisor Harvey Milk. The double assassination would be followed
by one of the most infamous psychiatric legal arguments of recent
history — the “Twinkie defense,” in Paul Krassner’s famous phrase
— and then by the White Night riots, when the city’s gay community
reacted to the assassin’s acquittal.

The whole Hinckle article is worth a read.
If you need a soundtrack while you peruse it, here is the Dead
Kennedys’ (*) response to the White verdict:

(* You just can’t escape the JFK references.)