“In the end, notwithstanding a surreal detour in the 1970s, Patricia led the life for which she was destined back in Hillsborough. The story of Patty Hearst, as extraordinary as it once was, had a familiar, even predictable ending. She did not turn into a revolutionary. She turned into her mother.”
* Toobin also cheated on his wife with the daughter of his CNN colleague and knocked her up. If I recall correctly he was not entirely chivalrous with regard to his bastard offspring either.
A defense of Clinton probably has a lot to do with a defense of himself.
* History, even recent history, is cyclical. 1975 was probably the height of both second-wave feminism and official sympathy for what was then called “black power”, effectively exculpating blacks from any agency in their low culture and high crime rate. Feminists did not want to admit the fragility of the female mind (particularly the young female mind), and the government/media did not want to admit the scope of the racial animus inherent to all black power movements, not just the SLA. So, Patty Hearst had to be guilty.
The tide turned with Reagan, and more so with Giuliani, and we have had a more or less three decade reprieve from this foolishness; but now we have come full circle with grrl-power media, Hillary (who is nothing if not a sclerotic 2nd-wave remnant), and Black Lives Matter, which might as well be the SLA, and probably soon will be (at least the parts that get frozen out of the Soros money).
* What a coincidence that I’m reading the book right now. About 3/4 the way through. It’s probably the best true-crime book I’ve ever read, right up there with In Cold Blood. Very difficult to put down.
The author says Hearst was 100 lbs when she was arrested. She was a voracious smoker and was thin before she was kidnapped.
The other living SLA members in jail said all the sex was consensual (and that DeFreeze never did it with her), and that specifically she was in love with one of her captors: Willy Wolfe. She had lost her virginity at 15 and had been living with her fiance, Steve Weed, when she was abducted at 19. She falls in love with Weed, then Wolfe, then after he’s dead, another guy named Steve Soliah. She sends him love letters while they’re both in jail. Then she gets close to one of her lawyers during the trial. Toobin doesn’t say they have a relationship, though.
Basically she’s a love-sick teen who falls for whatever guy can sweep her off her feet. Her revolutionary feminism just sounds like self-defense because she can’t stop falling in love. Who can blame her for that? But participating in so many violent felonies, according to the author, makes her sound like the fierce, revenge and hate-filled guerrilla that so many youngsters get sucked in to be. Apparently there were bombs going off all over California at that time. The term “boomers” is starting to make more sense for that generation.
* Stockholm Syndrome is a real thing but at some point Patty seemed to have become a real convert. After the bulk of the SLA including DeFreeze were killed in a shootout with the cops, she stayed with the remnant of the group for a year. By the end she was with only 1 – Wendy Yoshimura. She could have escaped many times. Even someone who is brainwashed must have moments of clarity where they remember their former selves. I’m not sure that it was really wrong to hold her accountable for her acts after her “conversion”. What if she had actually used the rifle she carried in the bank robbery and killed someone? Would she have had no responsibility for that?
During the course of one of the SLA bank robberies, Emily Harris murdered a customer who was waiting in line to make a deposit. Somehow, the state of California did not get around to prosecuting her until 2003 and then she got only 8 years. For killing someone during a bank robbery. Maybe there really is a double standard for SWPL type white people.
MS. GREENFIELD’s time in those trenches began in 2008, when, as a first-year associate at Gibson Dunn, a strait-laced corporate law firm, she found herself single and pregnant at 35.
The presumptive father was Mr. Toobin, a senior political analyst for CNN, staff writer for The New Yorker, best-selling author, married father of two teenagers and a close friend of Justice Elena Kagan of the Supreme Court, a classmate of his from Harvard Law. Ms. Greenfield met Mr. Toobin in the Condé Nast cafeteria when, while taking a breather from law school in her mid-20s, she worked as a fact-checker for Glamour magazine. They fell into a secretive off-and-on relationship spanning nearly a decade.
When Ms. Greenfield first informed him of her pregnancy, she said, Mr. Toobin questioned the paternity, balked at submitting to a test and vowed to take no responsibility for a baby he wasn’t sure was his. Both hired lawyers. Inevitably, the tabloids and gossip sites took notice of the scandal, dropping increasingly detailed hints about the behind-the-scenes drama.
“The one time you really don’t want to get pregnant is when you’re single and the other person is married and you’re working as a first-year junior associate at a law firm in a hard-core phase of trying to prove yourself to them,” Ms. Greenfield recalled last week. She said she ruled out an abortion. She did not delude herself that the emotional nadir of her life would qualify for much external sympathy. “I had a job at a prestigious firm,” she said, “a law degree from Yale that was paid for, a wonderful support group of friends.” But when she informed her parents that she was pregnant, she did not say by whom.
In March 2009, Ms. Greenfield had a baby boy and named him Roderick Henry Greenfield: Roderick is Mr. Labby’s middle name, and Henry is her father’s actual first name. She went on maternity leave for four months and then returned to Gibson Dunn until January 2011. She also sued Mr. Toobin for child support and custody of the baby, while being officially represented by Heidi Harris of Aronson, Mayefsky & Sloan, a preeminent matrimonial firm, and unofficially assisted by Mr. Labby, whom she calls her “fixer.”
Mr. Toobin ultimately acquiesced to a paternity test that confirmed he was the father of the boy, who is nicknamed Rory. He contested portions of her suit. The tabloids zeroed back in. In February 2010, the custody case was heard in Manhattan Family Court. It was not resolved until late last year, with Ms. Greenfield receiving full custody of Rory, including the right to make all pivotal decisions in his upbringing and schooling. She briefly represented herself in the remaining phase of litigation, a dispute over the amount of child support to which she was entitled; barring an 11th-hour settlement, the case is scheduled to return to Manhattan Family Court next month, this time with Mr. Labby litigating.
FATHERS Jeffrey Toobin, left, and Jeff Greenfield in 2008.
* In the book, “Empire of the Summer Moon” the Comanches rarely kept infants, usually killing them. They may have kept the occasional pre-teen or boy, but these captives were often treated as slaves and abused. The rare adult woman that they kept was usually raped and tortured and treated with utter contempt. The book is historically factual and foot noted.
* There are quite a few captivity narratives from that era. Nine Years Among the Indians by Herman Lehman tells how he was captured by Apaches and became a warrior. There’s some cold-blooded stories of how Indian raids worked. The Captive Boys by Jeff and Clinton Smith is similar. Cynthia Ann Parker was captured as a child, married a chief, and was the mother of the Comanches’ greatest war chief, Quanah.
While children seemed to adapt, adult women were just plain brutalized. Matilda Lockhart was horribly abused. When she revealed that the Comanches had other captives, Texan leaders tried to hold Comanche chiefs in San Antonio for treaty negotiations until they released other captives and the Council House fight resulted.
Scott Zesch wrote a pretty decent account of child captives held by Texas Indians, going into detail about the difficulty of returning to white society. But he glosses over the brutality meted out to adult women. Jack Jackson wrote a very good graphic novel biography of Quanah Parker, not omitting the horrors.