Probation officer gives office BJ to boot-camp teen
Get Off of Charlie Manson's Lawn, Or He'll Stare at You Sadly From His Cell
Friday, March 20, 2009 at 10:42 pm
I sometimes chafe against the fact that my primary subject blogging-wise is so inherently serious. If you've ever seen my Twitter feed, you know I'm not, in general, a very serious person - unless I'm writing about crime.
So that's why I really enjoyed the blog post that my friend Michael Ian Black wrote about
Charlie Manson's most recent photograph, which was released earlier this week.
Charles Manson
Why did I like it? Because while Charlie is a monster, nowadays he's really only worth a laugh. To laugh at Charlie Manson is not to take anything away from the memory of his victims. Lauging at Charlie puts him in his place. And Michael Ian Black, who is perhaps most well-known these days for his snarky and dry commentary on VH 1's "I Love The [70s/80s/90s]," certainly had some funny things to say about Crazy Charlie:
We finally got a new look at Charles Manson today, and I for one am disappointed with this year's model. Where are my beloved crazy eyes? Where is the scraggly Mennonite beard? What about the groovy hair? Sure he's got the swastika carved into his forehead but it's looking a bit perfunctory these days, like the polo playing guy on Ralph Lauren shirts. (Note: that faded swastika is a textbook case for why you need to put sunscreen on tattoos!) The craziest thing about the new Charles Manson are his eyebrows, which could use a good waxing.
Michael goes on to explain how Charlie has been "America's pre-eminent bogeyman" for the last 4 decades. Manson has been, in Michael's words, "the Cal Ripken Jr. of crazy."
According to Michael Ian Black, Charlie Manson is also the "undisputed heavyweight of psychopaths." That's debatable, but here Michael shows his pop culture acumen by making his case for why Charlie has the place that he does in true crime - and American - history:
Manson pretty did it all: hippie, cult leader, murderer of Hollywood actress, interpreter of Beatles lyrics, one-time auditioner for "the Monkees." Who is going to top a resumé like that?
Michael points out that "today's supervillains" are just "stealing money," and acknowledges that compared to the acts of a Charlie Manson, that's rather boring:
Manson didn't give a shit about money. He was having orgies. He was writing songs. He was dropping acid. He was smearing the word "Pigs" on the walls in blood. Manson was a guy who knew how to be fucking crazy!
What did Bernie Madoff ever do compared to that?
Not much, except commit the additional sin of looking grotesquely like the guy on the dollar bill.
Michael Ian Black is going for the funny in his discourse on Charlie through the years, and that's the sort of thing that frankly, might fly right over the heads of a lot of true crime fans. Most of us approach this particular subject with a great deal of seriousness, and funny stuff catches us unawares. We don't expect it in this context.
But I found a deeper point in Michael or anyone else making fun of Crazy Charlie Manson. It was in that photo of the bald, wizened man who now looks nothing like the nightmare hippie from hell seen on snarky t-shirts or in chilling (and sometimes strangely madcap) videos of Manson interviews through the years.
The Monster has become a joke. In a very real way, all his power is gone. Charlie the symbol, the crazy creeping evil hippie in the night, has become a punchline. Charlie the man is a very old, sad-looking man in a lonely prison cell.
And that's just as it should be.
Tags: Charles Manson, Charlie Manson, crime commentary, Manson Family, Michael Ian Black, pop culture
More links from around the web!
