US Pop Culture - 1950s - Twinkies

[Amy Z]

Catlady wrote:

> Note from me here: There never was a murder trial in the US where 
the 
> defendant claimed he been insane due to eating Twinkies. The 
> disappointed patronage-job seeker (I forgot his name) who killed 
> George Moscone and Harvey Milk argued that he had been sliding into 
> 'insanity' (depression, apparently) for a long time, offering as 
> proof that he had been changing his lifestyle for the worose, 
> including going from a health nut who worked out all the time to a 
> couch potato who ate Twinkies.

Dan White.  Rita, can you give a citation on this?  The play 
"Execution of Justice," which is about the White trial, draws heavily 
on court documents etc., and I seem to remember from it that the 
defense attorney did explicitly suggest that White's judgment was 
impaired due to his recent junk-food-heavy diet.

(That trial was in the late 70's, Al, so you can ignore it.  But the 
word "Twinkie" has become entangled with the idea of a very flimsy yet 
successful defense.)

If you really want to go whole hog, you could read David Halberstam's 
The Fifties.  It has a notable omission:  one of the major events of 
the 1950's in America was the last polio epidemic.

Amy