Let the Manson obsession die

From the Los Angeles Times:

Charles Manson’s bizarre plan to ignite a race war was unknown to Los Angeles in August 1969, as were his pathetic collection of young, rapt followers, his bizarre misinterpretation of Beatles lyrics, and Manson himself. What L.A. knew at the time was that seven people had been brutally murdered in two homes, apparently by invasion-style killers who left little clue as to motive. Crime was up nationwide, the turbulent 1960s were nearing their finale and the world seemed to have lost its mind. The city was terrified.

After the murders and the trial, Manson did nothing but sit in prison — as befits someone who misused his odd power over others by directing them to commit multiple murders. He forfeited his freedom and died an inmate.

But the rest of us have kept him alive. He is a fixture in the popular imagination, a point underscored in the film Natural Born Killers, itself a send-up of the intimate link between mass murder (or serial killings or spree killings or one of the other carefully categorized distinctions) and pop culture. Guns N’ Roses recorded a middling song Manson wrote. Pop act Marilyn Manson named himself partially after the killer.

The place of the Manson killings in the public mind may help ensure that none of the surviving murderers is ever paroled, leaving this nagging thought: If these killings had not resonated as they did, and were just seven scattered murders, would the five have been released long ago?

Is parole actually granted or withheld based on the crimes themselves and on evidence of remorse and rehabilitation, as it should be, or instead based on the publicity that can be marshaled for or against the inmates?

It is very much a live question, as California re-envigorates its parole system in response to last year’s Proposition 57. For Manson himself, though, there never was much of a question at all. He’s been effectively dead to the world for more than 40 years, except to the extent that we insisted on keeping him alive in print, on television, in pop music and film.

It would be nice if now, finally, we would just let him die.