Press enter after choosing selection

Squeaky, Sara & Patty

Squeaky, Sara & Patty image
Parent Issue
Day
1
Month
October
Year
1975
OCR Text

Between the two recent attempts on the life of Gerald Ford and the capture of turncoat heiress Patty Hearst, newspaper readers and television viewers have been constantly entertained for the past few weeks with front-page headlines and "probing" features on the Manson family, the so-called SLA, and other bizarre phenomena of the '70's.

As a result of this media barrage, international attention is focused on a political viewpoint which has been out of the public eye since the disappearance of the Weather people. The SLA trip always came on so weird and apocalyptical, even for the Bay area, that even sympathetic observers immediately suspected it of originating in the realms of the FBI, CIA, etc.

Poor Patty Hearst vacillates between "revolutionary" posturing and accusing her "comrades" of "brainwashing" her. Squeaky Fromme babbles about a "people's international corps of retribution." Sara Jane Moore apparently expects us to believe she took a shot at the President to impress her new "radical" friends and shake her FBI associations. Speculation is rife concerning Moore's possible relationships with both the FBI and the SLA.

Reading between the lines, a few facts are visible through the confusion: Ford has a great new issuesympathyto exploit in his campaign to stay in the White House. The left can again be connected in the public mind with armed terrorism. And the state of California can be held up as an example of how a state which harbors "radical" enclaves becomes a breeding ground for crazies. Whether there is a hand behind all this remains to be seen, but it certainly is curious, to say the least.

—DVP