
Originally Posted by
S.D.
As creator of Provider Module and avid enthusiast of interpretive readings, I'd just like to point out to any visitors from examiner.com that I believe Charles Manson's message to Marilyn Manson is about Hörse.
That aside, the debate about Charles Manson is an outdated and frankly tedious one. If you read extensively about The Manson Family, it always becomes painfully apparent that the events of 1969, and the atmosphere generated at Spahn Ranch were a product of two factors; cultural disparity slowly festering towards the end of the decade, and the fact that Charles Manson was a manipulative, deceitful, delusional, and thoroughly dislikeable little toad with no interest in anyone but himself.
In the same sense as Cult Of Personality tyrants like Stalin or Hitler - though with none of the larger ambition or organisational skills - Manson employed half-truths and hyperbolic self-mythology to convince people with no direction or will power to go and do what he wanted. He may not have physically done more than mistakenly shoot Crowe "dead", or prowl the grounds of Cielo Drive ordering Family members about, but he knew exactly what the outcome of the Benedict Canyon events would be by way of arch-manipulation and implicit orders to butcher and maim. There's little distinction between that than if he'd stabbed people to death himself.
Besides Manson's knowing attempts to confuse America (and indeed, his own Family members) with see-through spin Mumbo Jumbo, he's never been much more than a screwloose gangster. He remains in jail because the Canyon events were such a short-sharp-shock at the time, that the media and authorities wanted to set an example. His incarceration is an emblem of ending the freedom young people exerted with ease during the 1960s, and the perceived threat that posed to the establishment.
Marilyn Manson, on the other hand, has employed the vehicle of entertainment via half-truths and hyperbolic self-mythology to convince people with no guidance or cultural direction to go and do what they want. Comparing the two with all that in mind, I don't remotely care what the opinions of a crazed, nasty little relic of a bygone crime spree say about a successful international artist and musician.