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Nothing, not NFL analyst Tony Romo or an occasionally entertaining commercial like Bud Light poking fun at their beer competition could save this Super Snooze. In between watching Tom Brady play catch with wide receiver Julian Edelman, I found myself re-educating myself on a fascinating part of 70s California history I was too young to recall. How many of you remember the Symbionese Liberation Army?
Symbionese Liberation Army - Wikipedia
They were not really an army as much as a rag-tag platoon of upper-middle class white kids and an African-American from east Cleveland named Donald DeFreeze; Walter Cronkite once famously mispronounced his name as "Deep-Freeze" like a Batman nemesis. Formed during the halcyon days of U of California-Berkeley and the Kent State University student protests, much of their revolutionary philosophy was hatched from the fertile minds of theater majors William Harris and his wife Emily. They dreamed-up a sinister looking seven-headed cobra symbol, delivering to the media and F.B.I. a proclamation that they were United Federation Forces of the Symbionese Liberation Army. Of course that freaked-out the authorities who thought the U.S. was about to be attacked by some shadowy million-man army rather than a small group of women and a few male radicals who believed that good drugs and bad sex were the keys to a vibrant democracy.
Most famously the group kidnapped Patty Hearst, a petite, somewhat mousey-looking heir and a granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst who took the psychological definition of Stockholm Syndrome to an entirely new level. She helped plan bank robberies and hostage messages-- "Hell we can ask my old man to feed the entire state of California!!!"-- and in-general was a dream come true for any radical.
But all good things must come to and end and so on May 17, 1974 the "Symbion Knee-Zees" found themselves hiding-out in South Central Los Angeles; a group of rich white twenty-somethings and a black guy from Cleveland. Yeah, the authorities will never think of looking for them there. Moreover, the head of the LAPD at that time was Chief Daryl Gates, a cartoon version of Jack Webb and TV's Dragnet. Gates had invented a special unit of the police department based on his masturbatory orgasms of a paramilitary special-ops operation like the Navy Seals. It was to be given the acronym S.W.A.T. for Special Weapons and Tactical. And these guys could really kick-ass!
When word went-out on police frequencies that they had located the SLA in a not-so-safe, safe-house in South Central Los Angeles, an armed-response the likes of which California had never witnessed poured-forth from the LAPD. For Darryl Gates, this was his Iwo Jima. On one side were the battle-tested, heavily-armed S.W.A.T. team with anything up to 50-caliber machine guns. Bell Jet Ranger helicopters circled overhead with more S.W.A.T. officers armed with large caliber weapons. On the other side were the Symbion Knee-Zees, composed largely of a bunch of women who couldn't hit the Pacific Ocean while standing on a beach. Thousands of rounds of ammo were exchanged. Guess which side won?
Lastly, while all this was going-on, then KNXT Channel 2 introduced a brand new gizmo to the world of news, the minicam! With bullets flying, a CBS reporter cooly reported all the chaos back to anchor Jerry Dunphy in the studio in Hollywood. From the desert to the sea to all of Southern California...
The Minicam
Symbionese Liberation Army - Wikipedia
They were not really an army as much as a rag-tag platoon of upper-middle class white kids and an African-American from east Cleveland named Donald DeFreeze; Walter Cronkite once famously mispronounced his name as "Deep-Freeze" like a Batman nemesis. Formed during the halcyon days of U of California-Berkeley and the Kent State University student protests, much of their revolutionary philosophy was hatched from the fertile minds of theater majors William Harris and his wife Emily. They dreamed-up a sinister looking seven-headed cobra symbol, delivering to the media and F.B.I. a proclamation that they were United Federation Forces of the Symbionese Liberation Army. Of course that freaked-out the authorities who thought the U.S. was about to be attacked by some shadowy million-man army rather than a small group of women and a few male radicals who believed that good drugs and bad sex were the keys to a vibrant democracy.
Most famously the group kidnapped Patty Hearst, a petite, somewhat mousey-looking heir and a granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst who took the psychological definition of Stockholm Syndrome to an entirely new level. She helped plan bank robberies and hostage messages-- "Hell we can ask my old man to feed the entire state of California!!!"-- and in-general was a dream come true for any radical.
But all good things must come to and end and so on May 17, 1974 the "Symbion Knee-Zees" found themselves hiding-out in South Central Los Angeles; a group of rich white twenty-somethings and a black guy from Cleveland. Yeah, the authorities will never think of looking for them there. Moreover, the head of the LAPD at that time was Chief Daryl Gates, a cartoon version of Jack Webb and TV's Dragnet. Gates had invented a special unit of the police department based on his masturbatory orgasms of a paramilitary special-ops operation like the Navy Seals. It was to be given the acronym S.W.A.T. for Special Weapons and Tactical. And these guys could really kick-ass!
When word went-out on police frequencies that they had located the SLA in a not-so-safe, safe-house in South Central Los Angeles, an armed-response the likes of which California had never witnessed poured-forth from the LAPD. For Darryl Gates, this was his Iwo Jima. On one side were the battle-tested, heavily-armed S.W.A.T. team with anything up to 50-caliber machine guns. Bell Jet Ranger helicopters circled overhead with more S.W.A.T. officers armed with large caliber weapons. On the other side were the Symbion Knee-Zees, composed largely of a bunch of women who couldn't hit the Pacific Ocean while standing on a beach. Thousands of rounds of ammo were exchanged. Guess which side won?
Lastly, while all this was going-on, then KNXT Channel 2 introduced a brand new gizmo to the world of news, the minicam! With bullets flying, a CBS reporter cooly reported all the chaos back to anchor Jerry Dunphy in the studio in Hollywood. From the desert to the sea to all of Southern California...
The Minicam