Coming Down Fast

Ed Whelen writes that it was 40 years ago today that Sgt. Manson taught the band to play:

1969—“Now is the time for Helter Skelter,” declares Charles Manson, triggering two nights of vicious killing by the “Manson Family” in Los Angeles.  Some 2½ years later, in its own rampage (see This Week for Feb. 18, 1972), the California supreme court voids the death sentences that had been imposed on Manson and four other Family members.

As Bernardine Dohrn, the wife of noted academician Bill Ayers and only casual neighborhood acquaintance of President Obama screeched in her immediate response to Manson’s killing spree, “Dig It. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, they even shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach! Wild!”