Tag Archives: Jimmy Carter

Patty Hearst – Style Icon

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I adore this photo, it has done time as both computer and phone wallpapers and I think I have even thrown it in a few calendars I have made.  They just do not do heiress mug shots like this anymore, and that saddens me.Patricia Campbell Hearst (born February 20, 1954), now known as Patricia Campbell Hearst Shaw, is an American newspaper heiress, socialite, actress, kidnap victim, and convicted bank robber. Her kidnapping case is held by many as an example of Stockholm syndrome.

The granddaughter of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst and great-granddaughter of millionaire George Hearst, she gained notoriety in 1974 when, following her kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), she ultimately joined her captors in furthering their cause. Apprehended after having taken part in a bank heist with other SLA members, Hearst was imprisoned for almost two years before her sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter. She was later granted a presidential pardon by President Bill Clinton in his last official act before leaving office.

Hearst was born in San Francisco, California, the third of five daughters of Randolph Apperson Hearst and Catherine Wood Campbell. She grew up primarily in Hillsborough. She attended Crystal Springs School for Girls in Hillsborough and the Santa Catalina School in Monterey. Among her few close friends she counted Patricia Tobin, whose family founded the Hibernia Bank, a branch of which Hearst would later aid in robbing.

On February 4, 1974, the 19-year-old Hearst was kidnapped from the Berkeley, California apartment, she shared with her fiancé Steven Weed by a left-wing urban guerrilla group called the Symbionese Liberation Army. When the attempt to swap Hearst for jailed SLA members failed, the SLA demanded that the captive’s family distribute $70 worth of food to every needy Californian – an operation that would cost an estimated $400 million. In response, Hearst’s father arranged the immediate donation of $6 million worth of food to the poor of the Bay Area. After the distribution of food, the SLA refused to release Hearst because they deemed the food to have been of poor quality. (In a subsequent tape recording released to the press, Hearst commented that her father could have done better.) On April 3, 1974, Hearst announced on an audiotape that she had joined the SLA and assumed the name “Tania” (inspired by the nom de guerre of Haydée Tamara Bunke Bider, Che Guevara’s comrade). For this reason, she is often referred to as a victim of Stockholm Syndrome.

On April 15, 1974, she was photographed wielding an M1 carbine while robbing the Sunset District branch of the Hibernia Bank at 1450 Noriega Street in San Francisco. Later communications from her were issued under the pseudonym Tania and asserted that she was committed to the goals of the SLA. A warrant was issued for her arrest and in September 1975, she was arrested by the FBI and SFPD in a San Francisco apartment with other SLA member Wendy Yoshimura. FBI Agent Thomas Padden is credited with their actual arrests.

While being booked into jail, she listed her occupation as “Urban Guerilla” and asked her attorney to relay the following message: “Tell everybody that I’m smiling, that I feel free and strong and I send my greetings and love to all the sisters and brothers out there.” However, according to Hearst interviewer Margaret Singer, a noted authority on prisoner of war and other victims including Maryknoll priests released from the People’s Republic of China in the 1950s, this is not unusual in such cases. Singer strongly pleaded for understanding in Hearst’s behalf before, during and after the trial. Court-appointed doctor Louis Jolyon West as well as interviewers Drs. Robert Jay Lifton and Martin Theodore Orne agreed. Lifton went so far as to state after a 15-hour interview with Hearst that she was a “classic case,” about two weeks being needed for almost all persons undergoing that level of mind control to shuck off a good deal of the “gunk” that has filled the mind, as happened in his opinion with Hearst’s case. “If (she) had reacted differently, that would have been suspect” and Hearst was “a rare phenomenon (in a first-world nation)… the first and as far as I know the only victim of a political kidnapping in the United States” were direct quotes from Hearst’s autobiography attributed to the doctor. Dr. West firmly asserted that while Donald “Cinque” DeFreeze and other movement members had used a rather coarse version, they did employ the classic Maoist formula for thought control; Hearst was young and apolitical enough to be at extreme risk and, in his professional experience, that it would have even broken many experienced soldiers.

In her trial, which commenced on January 15, 1976 (and in her dozens of previous interviews by FBI agents Charles Bates and Lawrence Lawler—any reference to which was not allowed by the presiding judge to be included in the trial), Hearst’s attorney F. Lee Bailey claimed that Hearst had been blindfolded, imprisoned in a narrow closet and physically and sexually abused. Hearst’s defense claimed that her actions were the result of a concerted brainwashing program.

The prosecution countered with two experts: Dr. Joel Fort, who, unsolicited, had previously offered favorable testimony in paid service to the defense team, which was refused; and Dr. Harry L. Kozol, noted expert on brain disorders, sex offenders and high-profile mentally ill criminals. He formerly had been the long term doctor for Eugene O’Neill and evaluated the confessed Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo, a case defended in 1967 by Bailey. Kozol claimed Hearst was “a rebel in search of a cause” and that the robbery had been “an act of free will.” During a pre-trial interview, Hearst accurately described the apartment where the SLA was captured, but neglected to mention the narrow closet where she was allegedly confined. In Kozol’s view, Hearst’s omission confirmed the prosecution’s thesis: returning the embrace of the SLA, she had ceased to be a victim. The rebel had come out of the closet. When Kozol testified, Hearst turned “the dead white color of a fish’s belly,” according to journalist Shana Alexander. “Harry never lost the spirit of the law,” Dr. Harold W. Williams, then a psychiatrist at McLean Hospital in Belmont, told The New York Times in 1976, when prosecutors asked Dr. Kozol to examine Hearst. “Harry is very much in personality a lawyer.”

Bailey argued that she had been coerced or intimidated into taking part in the bank robbery. However, she refused to give evidence against the other captured SLA members. This was seen as complicity by the prosecution team.

Hearst was convicted of bank robbery on March 20, 1976. She was sentenced to 35 years’ imprisonment, but her sentence was later commuted to seven years. Her prison term was also eventually commuted by President Jimmy Carter, and Hearst was released from prison on February 1, 1979, having served 22 months. She was granted a full pardon by President Bill Clinton on January 20, 2001.

Jimmy Carter – Style Icon

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NAME: Jimmy Carter
OCCUPATION: U.S. President
BIRTH DATE: October 01, 1924 (Age: 87)
EDUCATION: Georgia Southwestern College, Georgia Institute of Technology, US Naval Academy
PLACE OF BIRTH: Plains, Georgia

BEST KNOWN FOR: Jimmy Carter was the 39th president of the United States (1977-81) and later was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

James Earl “Jimmy” Carter, Jr. (born October 1, 1924) is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States (1977–1981) and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office. Before he became President, Carter served as a U.S. Naval officer, was a peanut farmer, served two terms as a Georgia State Senator and one as Governor of Georgia (1971–1975).

As President, Carter created two new cabinet-level departments: the Department of Energy and the Department of Education. He established a national energy policy that included conservation, price control, and new technology. In foreign affairs, Carter pursued the Camp David Accords, the Panama Canal Treaties, the second round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II), and returned the Panama Canal Zone to Panama.

Throughout his career, Carter strongly emphasized human rights. He took office during a period of international stagflation, which persisted throughout his term. The end of his presidential tenure was marked by the 1979–1981 Iran hostage crisis, the 1979 energy crisis, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (at the end of 1979), 1980 Summer Olympics boycott by the United States of the Moscow Olympics and the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.

By 1980, Carter’s popularity had eroded. He survived a primary challenge against Ted Kennedy for the Democratic Party nomination in the 1980 election, but lost the election to Republican candidate Ronald Reagan. On January 20, 1981, minutes after Carter’s term in office ended, the 52 U.S. captives held at the U.S. embassy in Iran were released, ending the 444-day Iran hostage crisis.

After leaving office, Carter and his wife Rosalynn founded the Carter Center in 1982, a nongovernmental, not-for-profit organization that works to advance human rights. He has traveled extensively to conduct peace negotiations, observe elections, and advance disease prevention and eradication in developing nations. Carter is a key figure in the Habitat for Humanity project, and also remains particularly vocal on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In 1982, he established The Carter Center in Atlanta to advance human rights and alleviate unnecessary human suffering. The non-profit, nongovernmental Center promotes democracy, mediates and prevents conflicts, and monitors the electoral process in support of free and fair elections. It also works to improve global health through the control and eradication of diseases such as Guinea worm disease, river blindness, malaria, trachoma, lymphatic filariasis, and schistosomiasis. It also works to diminish the stigma of mental illnesses and improve nutrition through increased crop production in Africa. A major accomplishment of The Carter Center has been the elimination of more than 99% of cases of Guinea worm disease, a debilitating parasite that has existed since ancient times, from an estimated 3.5 million cases in 1986 to 3,190 reported cases in 2009. The Carter Center has monitored 81 elections in 33 countries since 1989. It has worked to resolve conflicts in Haiti, Bosnia, Ethiopia, North Korea, Sudan and other countries. Carter and the Center actively support human rights defenders around the world and have intervened with heads of state on their behalf.

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“Haters Gonna Hate” -Martin Luther King Jr.

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I more or less loathe every post I read on facebook and I am beginning to realize why: there is no thought put into them. They are reactionary, they are spur of the moment comments, they are poorly thought through opinions. It is the nature of the media, an instant update of what the poster is thinking at that very moment. I am the first to admit that I have a lot of bullshit ideas in my head and if I tweeted all of them, I would be locked up to protect me from others as well as myself.

I post less and less. I dumped my twitter account because I know no one cares what I am eating and I do not have anything to sell or promote. I post less and less because I fear my opinions are as annoying to someone as theirs are to me. I post photos a lot. I post humorous little anecdoetes. Then I write somewhere else. I write drafts and drafts before they are read by anyone else. They are sometimes heartfelt, sometimes humorous, and sometimes a call to action for the readers, but they are always planned, researched, and interesting to me.

I see people celebrating winning sports teams, royal weddings, and terrorist’s deaths and realize that I almost never “WOO HOO!” In the Homer Simpson application of it, not in the Sims 2 (ya, I read Urban Dictionary too).

It got me to thinking about what/who I would totally lose my mind over and I cannot think of any specific incidents. I have looked through my listed “heros” on facebook and all of them are dead except Jimmy Carter so, I guess would totally loose my business cool if I ever met him. But since the others are dead, I would probably be pretty freaked out to meet them too.

Today is the birthday of William Inge, born in 1913 in Independence, Kansas. He came to be known as the “Playwright of the Midwest,” and credits his keen understanding of human nature to growing up in a small town: “I’ve often wondered how people raised in our great cities ever develop any knowledge of humankind. People who grow up in small towns get to know each other so much more closely than they do in cities.”

While working as a drama critic for the St. Louis Star-Times, Inge met Tennessee Williams, who invited him to a production of The Glass Menagerie. Inge was inspired to write a play of his own, Farther Off from Heaven (1947), which Williams recommended for production. He wrote a string of hits — Come Back, Little Sheba (1950), Picnic (1952) for which he received a Pulitzer Prize, Bus Stop (1955), and The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1957) — all of which would later be turned into movies. He enjoyed less success and acclaim in the 1960s, however, with the sole exception being his screenplay for Splendor in the Grass (1961). He won an Oscar for it, but his five final plays were box office flops, and he killed himself in 1973, convinced he could no longer write.