Hmm

[arkanjil]

Is Milk misrepresenting history?

From a friend of a friend of a friend- the source appears authentic, tho it is a paraphrase at heart:

Comments

[cpratt]

The Pier 39 stuff sounds fishy - Pier 39 only opened a few weeks before the double homicide - but other than that, sure, I think it's legit to read it that way as well. I was kinda young at the time, so I don't remember events too clearly - but it wouldn't surprise me if many gay people find it easy to oversimplify history by simply saying "they shot Milk because he was gay."

I did see van Sant's movie, and I thought it was even-handed enough to allow the alternate reading as well; there was plenty of talk about how Milk was, well, an effective politician after the election, doing what he could to get the votes he needed, but not giving White what he needed in return (which is of course well within the bounds of the game, I reckon).

Of course, whether or not there's internalized homophobia involved, we'll probably never know for sure. There's also mention of that in the film and in Roger Ebert's review, for example.

[snousle]

There was a letter to the Chronicle (also by Feinstein?) that said many of the same things.

Why is this shocking? I don't see how it contradicts anything in the film, nor in the previous biography (from about 15 years ago?) as far as I can recall. I can't think of anyone who has said that Milk's murder was an act of homophobia, although people who know the story in passing might be forgiven for making that assumption.

[arkanjil]

well, not shocking to me, but Harvey's mythology has been under development for a while, and I'm fascinated on how such stories go. Much like Harry Hay's narrative, the man vs the legend for Harvey are very hard to parse out already