Harvey Milk, Dan White, and the “Twinkie Defense”

I was incredibly moved tonight by an amazing film. It was the poignant and searing true story of Harvey Milk, gay rights icon and San Francisco Supervisor, who, in 1978, was murdered along with Mayor George Moscone by fellow councilman Dan White. The film took home two Oscars – Sean Penn for his portrayal of Milk and Dustin Lance Black for Best Original Screenplay.

During the trial, White’s lawyers offered the court the idea that the murders coincided with White’s increased consumption of high-sugar and other junk foods. White was convicted of manslaughter, not murder, and served five years of his sentence before being released. White’s lawyers argued that he suffered from diminished capacity, and the press dubbed it the “Twinkie defense.” When the film’s trailing commentary highlighted this fabricated term I was reminded of just how absurd the explanation was.

The irony of the label is that Twinkies never appeared in the court transcripts. Nevertheless, the public has maintained the misperception that a physical phenomenon, akin to a sugar rush, explains White’s cruel and despicable acts. In A View from the Cosmic Mirror, the “Twinkie defense” is an example of what is referred to as the crazy mirror. Over the last 30 years, we have medicalized our explanations of social behavior. If we are depressed we’re to take a pill to remedy it. If the pill does not work we are asked to take another pill to augment it. This has been the strategy of one pharmaceutical company who persuades us to add their pill to an antidepressant regimen when the symptoms of depression persist.

Insistently attributing medical causes in explaining cruel social actions does not make them true. From the perspective of the cosmic mirror, the cruel and inhumane treatment of others stems from buried reflections of the self, acted out in ways that mirror the darkness and cruelty contained within us. The film Milk depicts the troubled inner world of Dan White (played by Josh Brolin) leading to his assassination of Moscone and Milk. In the film, Milk shares with others his intuition that White was secretly closeting from himself his denied inner fears and conflicts about his homosexuality. White kills Milk who is merely the outer representation of White’s own shadow – his denied homosexuality. This is the nature of the cosmic mirror – that we often project into the world what is denied within us. Here we clearly see the destructiveness of being unaware of the depth of our shadow.