Creepy Crawling

Charles Manson and the Many Lives of America's Most Infamous Family

De: Jeffrey Melnick

Narrado por: Tom Parks

"Creepy crawling" was the Manson Family's practice of secretly entering someone's home and, without harming anyone, leaving only a trace of evidence that they had been there, some reminder that the sanctity of the private home had been breached. Now, author Jeffrey Melnick reveals just how much the Family creepy crawled their way through Los Angeles in the sixties and then on through American social, political, and cultural life for close to fifty years, firmly lodging themselves in our minds. Even now, it is almost impossible to discuss the sixties, teenage runaways, sexuality, drugs, music, California, and even the concept of family without referencing Manson and his "girls."

Not just another history of Charles Manson, Creepy Crawling explores how the Family weren't so much outsiders but emblematic of the Los Angeles counterculture freak scene, and how Manson worked to connect himself to the mainstream of the time. Ever since they spent two nights killing seven residents of Los Angeles--what we now know as the "Tate-LaBianca murders--the Manson family has rarely slipped from the American radar for long. From Emma Cline's The Girls to the recent TV show Aquarius, the family continues to find an audience. What is it about Charles Manson and his family that captivates us still? Author Jeffrey Melnick sets out to answer this question in this fascinating and compulsively readable cultural history of the Family and their influence from 1969 to the present.

©2018 Jeffrey Melnick (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved

Basically a woke look at the Manson story

Let me get the seemingly universal traits of Manson books out of the way first. There are some interesting parts and some new information. At first, it may be difficult to trust the author and you may consider putting it down for good. Even if you end up not liking the book, all of those interested in the Manson case should still read it.

As usual, early on I thought I might not finish the book. Actually, in this case, I remember thinking, "I will be absolutely shocked if I get through this.” This book is the author's attempt to see the Manson story through the lens of post-9/11 theory and slant. What makes that even worse, is that the author is a snobby, sarcastic, know-it-all lefty who even other know-it-all lefties would despise. There is just way too much theory from the very start. He goes off on discussions of dialogue and language that are going to bore anyone who took theory classes covering Foucault and Derrida and took it for what it was: a theory class that you took at university. In other words: not the real world.

The annoying lefty hipster stuff is way over the top. He throws in rap shoutouts which play like non sequiturs and obviously desperate attempts to seem cool. I have friends of all different beliefs, but I'm really not a fan of the self-hating male socialist viewpoint.

Honestly, some of the cultural stuff is very interesting, but loony tunes 5th wave feminism is always intertwined.

Melnick really goes astray when he focuses on the breakdown of the traditional family. It’s silly and at times irrelevant. You can’t on one hand say that single-parent families are just as good as two-parent families and then say that the government was derelict in failing to create programs to assist those single-parent families.

This of course leads into a discussion of group living and communes which were popular experiments of the time. He talks about how gender roles remained unchanged, despite all the talk of equality and wanting to break away from society. Here’s an example: he remarks that at the ranch—like most other communes—the men chopped wood and the women were more involved in the taking care of the children.

This appears to be an important point for Melnick. One can only marvel at the power of the human mind, which allows us to ignore reality for the sake of the positive emotional feelings we get from believing that life is how we wish it would be. Of course, the men chopped wood. They had to have fire for warmth and cooking and all sorts of things, and the wood needed to be chopped. Wood is heavy and it takes a heavy axe to cut it down to size. Men are exponentially more adept at performing this task.

But what about the women taking care of the children. Well, for starters, they gave birth to them. They are instinctively more concerned with protecting those children. They’re also physically in a better position to help their children because they can feed them. Why this stuff is so hard for some people boggles the mind. It doesn’t appear to have occurred to Melnick that perhaps wanting equal opportunity and freedom to do as one desires doesn’t really have anything to do with rejecting things like women being more attached to their children than men, and men being more apt to do physical labor.

Once I realized that the author was just using the subject of the Family as a vehicle to project his super woke fantasies, I turned on double speed. It still seemed to last forever. I have always been fascinated by the phenomenon of American teens running away; particularly in the pre-internet age. Some of the section on that is interesting, but once again it’s ruined by Melnick’s instance on bringing it all back to the woke concept of “privilege.” This is the sort of guy who would run for office representing one issue. Like instead of, “oh he’s running on the gold standard ticket,” or “he won the nomination of the No More Foreign Wars Party,” he would run on the, “Wacky Modern Feminist,” platform. His opinions on anything would be shaped around new feminist ideals.

I will say that I was not aware that the girls went through feminist courses in prison as part of the process of deprogramming them. That makes sense and I have to imagine it helped greatly.

It is also amazing how many Manson Family inspired works there are. One section that is quite enjoyable is a breakdown of some of the more obscure films concerning the Family or in some way similar to that situation. I’m hoping to check some of them out at some point in the future.

Another really fascinating portion of the book deals with the reaction of Hollywood. We’ve read all about the fear that gripped the town, but it was more than that. The town had somewhat embraced him and the Family (at least at certain times) and there was now a mad scramble to erase any connection that the stars ever had with the freaks from the desert.

Overall, Part 2 of the book is much more enjoyable. Melnick’s constant criticism of everyone and everything does become tiresome. At times during the book he links Bugliosi and Ed Sanders together, really hammering on how the two profited from the murders, as if Sanders the civil rights leader and author is just another profiteer like the DA. He’s not even really able to explain why he doesn’t like Sanders.

Melnick also goes in hard on Vincent Bugliosi, but much of what he says is valid. However, he loses anything gained here, by disputing Bugliosi and Sanders in their critique of the LAPD. NOBODY thinks the LAPD handled the case well. They had almost nothing to do with solving the case, and in some ways hindered it.

Look, the guy is certainly smart, but he’s just a jerk. I think the reason I’m going on and on here is because while listening to the book I was continuously thinking, “Man, somebody should do a critique of his smart ass.” He wants to be cool so bad, it’s a little pathetic. Melnick continues to throw in hip-hop references and apparently just loves to name drop bands that he thinks other people think are cool.

Okay I’m done now. For those who are obsessed with the case, read the book. But you may hate it.

Another pro-Manson book

This is another one of those books about Manson where the premise is that the Manson family were actually the good guys and society is really the bad guy. We know this right from the beginning of the book when he tries to tell us that the the murders were committed out of brotherly love. They just wanted Bobby Beausoliel out of jail because they loved him so much cuz he was part of their family. But of course, we know that the real reason for wanting him out of jail is because Manson knew he was about to snitch. It had nothing to do with love. But this is what the author would like us to believe. That they were just a big loving family, (who just happened to all have sex with each other and rob drug dealers and murder people).