Dan White was not a monster!!
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j-craig-2 — 16 years ago(February 04, 2010 09:08 AM)
Yeah well read up on his life before he became a politican,the guy was a decent man who became mentally ill,how about a little compassion folks? & forgivness,ever heard of they words? Furthermore wouldnt it have hurt Dan White more anyway to have lived out the remainder of his life with the burden of what he had done? Think about it!
Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day. -
alpeaston — 16 years ago(February 04, 2010 11:32 PM)
I can have plenty of compassion for White, his wife and his kids. No doubt a terrible tragedy all around.
But I also think of the contribution that a living Harvey Milk might have made. Who knows how much more along we could be with gay right. He could have been the gay Martin Luther King!
No one won in this terrible event but it is especially disquieting (and remarkably unjust) that White, who obviously premeditated the dual murders, walked away with so little time especially considering he easily qualified for the death penalty!
"LORD, PLEASE SAVE ME FROM YOUR FOLLOWERS!!!" -
BertramWilberforceWooster — 12 years ago(November 04, 2013 12:58 AM)
He could have been the gay Martin Luther King!
That's a horrible comparison. MLK was black.
Btw, before you get offended, that was meant as sarcasm, so pull your panties out of twats.
All your base are belong to us.
http://athinkersblog.com/ -
talktej27 — 15 years ago(June 30, 2010 06:37 PM)
So if I've done a few good deeds in my past life, but am currently suffering from slight depression, would I qualify to assassinate others & get over it serving only 5 years' sentence for my acts under stress? If we go by your theory, we should be having quite a few assassinations everyday. There are lots of decent guys out there going through a hell lot of stress, but strange as you may find it, they don't resort to murdering people just in order to deal with their "mental illness".
P.S. English isn't my native language, but I hope you'd get what I'm trying to convey here. -
Doc80 — 13 years ago(January 25, 2013 01:03 PM)
I would like to point out that Dan White didn't lose his job, he quit. He quit because he didn't get his way and after he actually thought about his decision, he wanted back in. Only problem though was that Mayor Mascone wouldn't reinstate him because he didn't think it was right to just reward him after he spit in the face of the people who elected him in the first place. A good example would if a US Senator suddenly quits and after a week, the go to the governor of the state to name them as the "replacement," assuming of course that that is the setup in that state.
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0dyssey — 15 years ago(November 15, 2010 11:20 PM)
I don't give a flying fck if White was depressed or whatever. the beep still MURDERED 2 PEOPLE!
anyone who thinks 5 years in prison makes up for taking 2 innocent lives is a fcking moron!!
diminished capacity is a bullsh!t excuse for someone's actions.
"oh it's not his fault he pulled a gun and shot 2 people.. he wasn't feeling well" well boo fcking hoo for him. where's your bleeding heart for the people he gunned down in cold blood?!
I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass.and I'm all out of bubble gum -
CaliCurmudgeon — 15 years ago(February 21, 2011 04:10 PM)
Oh really? Ray Sloan, who was Dan White's campaign manager, had been openly gay for years at the time of the campaign. White knew about Sloan's sexuality and never had a problem with it.
Dan White resented being stabbed in the back politically by Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Milk, and killed them both. No, this is not to justify the murders, simply to explain the motive. However, the attempt to make a sleazy politician like Harvey Milk into a martyr is rather repulsive. -
CaliCurmudgeon — 15 years ago(February 22, 2011 12:53 PM)
Milk asked for White's support on a "gay" issue, and White asked for a quid pro quo, first with respect to not placing a halfway house in his district, then with respect to Supervisor pay. Milk stabbed him in the back both times.
No that doesn't justify shooting Milk, but to gloss over Milk's political sleaziness is a shortfall of this movie. -
CaliCurmudgeon — 15 years ago(February 24, 2011 06:07 AM)
Here:
http://www.sfweekly.com/2008-01-30/news/white-in-milk/1/
Here:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/11/23/INGRE343501.DTL&ao=3
And Here:
http://www.city-journal.org/2009/eon0521df.html
Again, this does not justify shooting and killing Harvey Milk. And Daniel White should probably have been convicted of Murder One and not 2nd degree / manslaughter.
However, since Harvey's death hes become Martin Luther Milk. And he was anything but. He wasnt some sort of holy saint. He could be a corrupt maneuvering swine. -
Luxn — 15 years ago(February 24, 2011 10:47 PM)
Corrupt, maneuvering (sic) swine? At least he wasn't a murderous one though, eh?
Are you seriously trying to lessen the horror of this crime by demonising the victim? I am not suggesting your info on Milk is wrong but it pales into insignificance compared to the atrocities White committed.
If White was 'driven' to this behaviour, then it was only because he had a low tolerance for not getting his own way, or for things not working out the way he wanted. I would suggest that politics was totally the wrong profession for him.
And so what if he had issues that made him slightly unstable (and it had to be slight at most or he would not have been able to do his job)? There are very, very few truly evil people in the world. Most of those who commit murder and atrocities are 'made' into the monsters they become. They all face prison and consequences and are called monsters. Why shouldn't White be judged in the same way?
Anyone who murders two people in cold blood is a monster. Why are some of you having a problem admitting that? -
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greenbanzanas — 16 years ago(March 06, 2010 09:48 AM)
Somehow I seriously doubt that you are willing to give many other criminals the same benefit of the doubt. There is a huge difference between what we, as lay people, call crazy and the legal defense sufficient to excuse culpability. I just wonder on what basis you argue he was legally crazy, and don't tell me that he was suffering from depression. That contention would tend to jeopardize our entire justice system.
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multiplepov-1 — 16 years ago(March 17, 2010 03:57 PM)
Actually, this movie was too kind to Dan White by half. Here (in general terms, no dates) are the events leading up to the assassinations:
The promoters behind Pier 39 (a commercial venture that was slogging through the many demands that SF's liberal Board of Supervisors placed on real estate development) assigned a concession on very favorable financial terms (a baked potato fast food place, I think) to Dan White.
Dan White (unhappy on SF's liberal Board of Supervisors) announced he was quitting due to financial hardship (considered a "part time" job, supervisors were paid a miniscule salary; if I remember correctly, $9,000 a year) so he and his family could run the concession.
What was not revealed and published in the San Francisco Chronicle until long after the trial ended with its ridiculous sentence of "involuntary manslaughter" was this: after White quit, the promoters behind Pier 39 informed him that the only reason he'd gotten the concession on such favorable financial terms was
because
he was on the Board of Supervisors. Now, any pro-Pier 39 stance he'd taken earlier on the Board, helping nudge the development through, may have been honest (conservatives being pro-business). But now he knew that if he was going to keep his deal, he had to get back on the Board of Supervisors.
And soDan White asked for his job back (not so he could represent his district but so that he could represent the Pier 39 promoters). Mayor Moscone, happy to have the Dan White thorn out of his side, understandably refused to reconsider the resignation.
So, the motive behind Dan White's assassination of Mayor Moscone was anger based on his potential financial loss.
Any way you look at it, though, Dan White's assassination of Harvey Milk was pure hate crime.
So, sureDan White was
emotionally disturbed
. Like anyone harboring a grudge would be.
Here are some points to remember when weighing whether he was "legally" insane:- He carried the gun from home to City Hall.
- He avoided metal detectors by going through a window.
- He put on a friendly face to guards and others he passed on the way to reach his first target, Moscone.
- He shot Moscone from a safe distance, then walked up to the prostate man, put the gun to the back of his head and fired again, execution style, to make sure he was dead.
- He walked clear around the rotunda to reach Milk on the other side.
- As he'd killed Moscone, he first shot Milk from a distance, then fired another point blank shot into his skull.
Dan White knew exactly what he was doing.
"I've always resisted the notion that knowledge ruined paradise." Prof. Xavier