The myth of Harvey Milk, “martyr for gay rights” (not), and his relationship to mass murderer Jim Jones, are detailed in Drinking Harvey Milk’s Kool-Aid
Sean Penn’s Harvey Milk is as real as Toby Maguire’s Spider-Man. Who has time for the sordid details of purportedly staged hate crimes and boosterism of America’s most prolific mass murderer when there is a gay Martin Luther King to be mythologized? Even the fervent atheist Milk understood the need for patron saints. When confronted by a jaded supporter over his fabricated tale that the Navy had booted him out because of his sex life, Milk responded: “Symbols. Symbols. Symbols.” He understood his movement better than his movement did. When the facts didn’t fit the script, both Milk and his present-day admirers adjusted the facts. As the elected sponsors of Harvey Milk Day realize, Californians are more likely to remember the celluloid hero they saw depicted by Sean Penn earlier this year than the obscure city official who walked largely unnoticed in their midst three decades ago.
The advocates of a Harvey Milk Day know box office. They don’t know the real Harvey Milk.
I’ve never tried putting Kool-Aid in milk. Sounds yucky. California doesn’t need another holiday, even one where people still have to go to work. We don’t need to commemorate anyone else this year. Or next year.
