ORIGINAL SIN Chapter Four

 

“...the concentration of wealth (is) what the Republican party is all about.”

Kevin Phillips. “The Politics of Rich and Poor” 1990

The red BMW convertible raced northbound up the tree lined Lake Drive in the North Port neighborhood of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It powered toward the little park called the Gilman Triangle. 

The red headed driver reeked of beer as he blew through the stop sign at East Bradford Avenue. Homes and apartment buildings flashed past as he drifted over the center of the 2500 block of the narrow residential street.

It was another 3^rd of July evening, this one two years before Angela and Clifford Barnes would be brutally attacked some 900 miles to the east. The drunk behind the wheel was 38 year old Dennis Frankenberry (above) , a “precocious young advertising executive” and founder of the hottest firm in Milwaukee.  

He had just snared the multi-million dollar Miller Brewing Company account for his agency.  He was, as the saying went, “rich, white and over twenty-one”, and a regular donor to the Wisconsin Republican party.   

Dennis may or may not have seen the single headlamp looming in front of him. He must have felt the impact as the motorcycle crumpled against the kidney grill of his car. And he surely saw the two passengers as they were catapulted onto his hood, and then tossed aside to the pavement like crumpled trash.

The damaged BMW did not pause, and Dennis Frankenberry did not inquire as to the condition the victims he left sprawled on the street behind him. 

Twenty-one year old Toby Gargardeski got the worst of it, fracturing his skull. After surgery the next day Toby would be left in a coma, in critical but stable condition. His companion, 20 year old Melcio Montemoyer, also suffered head injuries, but his most serious injury was a badly fractured leg which would require several surgeries and would never fully heal.

The red BMW continued half a mile up Lake Drive before turning onto East Locust Street. When the car started to give out, Dennis pulled onto a side street, where he finally stopped. He burst into the nearest house, telling the startled occupants that he had just been an accident. They noted he reeked of alcohol and had “watery, red eyes”.  Dennis demanded a glass of water, then a phone. When the police arrived, summoned by a witness who had followed his escape, Dennis hid upstairs. The occupants admitted the cops, who took Dennis into custody. He spent Wednesday night in jail, and on Thursday morning, 4 July, 1985, he was released on bail.

On Monday morning, 8 July, 1985, Dennis Frankenberry was asked to appear with his attorney at the district attorney's office at 8:30 am to discuss the accident. He finally showed up at noon. After a short meeting, Dennis was free to leave again. 

This time he left the state, checking into a private hospital in Kansas to be treated for his addictions to cocaine and alcohol. In reporting his extraordinary treatment, 

The Milwaukee Journal would win no Pulitzer Prize for their coverage. They identified Dennis only as “an advertising executive”. The newspaper was a client of his firm, as was the state of Wisconsin.

It would be October before the city got around to charging Dennis Frankenberry, with reckless driving and leaving the scene of an accident. The October trial was quick. Dennis pled guilty as charged.  He was fined $300. 

And he was incarcerated. For 90 days. In fact he only spent his nights in jail. His days were spent in his office, working on anti-drinking and driving public service ads which would count toward his court ordered 250 hours of public service. In other words he was serving his sentences concurrently. Dennis was also furloughed to spend weekends with his wife and children.  The hypocrisy was noted by a few Milwaukee journalist, despite the official blanket thrown over Dennis' transgression. It was true, as one author has pointed out, that “While outside the correctional facility, Frankenberry committed advertising, not kidnapping and rape.” Still his treatment was the exception.

After only 66 days Dennis was “released” for “good behavior”. That left only the court ordered restitution to his victims. In early January of 1987 the lawyers announced that Toby Gargardeski, awake but struggling to read again and having short term memory problems, was awarded $990,000, and Melcio Montemoyer, just beginning to deal with the nerve damage in his leg and foot, was awarded $250,000. According to the courts, justice had been served. The crippled Melcio explained to the few reporters who showed up, “If it had been me, I would have probably gotten a longer sentence...but then we're no big shots.”  Nor were they white.

The public service ads produced by Frankenberry, Laughlin and Constable would win awards,

bringing the agency and Dennis to the attention of some even “bigger shots”, who, despite Dennis' new reputation, invited them to come to Washington to submit ideas based on theme's suggested by Atwater and Ailes.

Frankenberry's team submitted four ads the Bush campaign decided to put into production. There was the “Boston Harbor” spot (above), attacking Dukakis' environmental record, which was far stronger than Bush's.  There was “Tax Blizzard” which threatened a flood of IRS missives pouring into a middle class family home, building on the “tax and spend Democrats” trope. And there was the “Oath of Allegiance” ad which implied that Micheal Dukakis was unpatriotic. But the one that interested Atwater and Ailes the most was Dennis' “Revolving Door” spot.

“The Revolving Door” did not mention William Horton or his crimes. Atwater and Ailes knew such a blatant racist attack (“n---er, n---er, n---er”) would cause a media blow back. But it could serve as cover for such and attack.  As Ailes told Ad Age magazine, “News is who has the hottest attack ads and who can get the highest ratings.”  The odd fact that the man who would help destroy the weekend parole system in American had himself benefited from that same system did not seem to bother any of the participants.

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FOREIGN AGENTS Chapter Four

“...the concentration of wealth are what the Republican party is all about.”

Kevin Phillips. “The Politics of Rich and Poor” 1990

The red BMW convertible raced northbound up the tree lined Lake Drive in the North Port neighborhood of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It powered toward the little park called the Gilman Triangle. 

The red headed driver reeked of beer as he blew through the stop sign at East Bradford Avenue. Homes and apartment buildings flashed past as he drifted over the center of the 2500 block of the narrow residential street.

It was another 3^rd of July evening, this one two years before Angela and Clifford Barnes would be brutally attacked some 900 miles to the east. The drunk behind the wheel was 38 year old Dennis Frankenberry (above) , a “precocious young advertising executive” and founder of the hottest firm in Milwaukee.  

He had just snared the multi-million dollar Miller Brewing Company account for his agency.  He was, as the saying went, “rich, white and over twenty-one”, and a regular donor to the Wisconsin Republican party.   

Dennis may or may not have seen the single headlamp looming in front of him. He must have felt the impact as the motorcycle crumpled against the kidney grill of his car. And he surely saw the two passengers as they were catapulted onto his hood, and then tossed aside to the pavement like crumpled trash.

The damaged BMW did not pause, and Dennis Frankenberry did not inquire as to the condition the victims he left sprawled on the street behind him. 

Twenty-one year old Toby Gargardeski got the worst of it, fracturing his skull. After surgery the next day Toby would be left in a coma, in critical but stable condition. His companion, 20 year old Melcio Montemoyer, also suffered head injuries, but his most serious injury was a badly fractured leg which would require several surgeries and would never fully heal.

The red BMW continued half a mile up Lake Drive before turning onto East Locust Street. When the car started to give out, Dennis pulled onto a side street, where he finally stopped. He burst into the nearest house, telling the startled occupants that he had just been an accident. They noted he reeked of alcohol and had “watery, red eyes”.  Dennis demanded a glass of water, then a phone. When the police arrived, summoned by a witness who had followed his escape, Dennis hid upstairs. The occupants admitted the cops, who took Dennis into custody. He spent Wednesday night in jail, and on Thursday morning, 4 July, 1985, he was released on bail.

On Monday morning, 8 July, 1985, Dennis Frankenberry was asked to appear with his attorney at the district attorney's office at 8:30 am to discuss the accident. He finally showed up at noon. After a short meeting, Dennis was free to leave again. 

This time he left the state, checking into a private hospital in Kansas to be treated for his addictions to cocaine and alcohol. In reporting his extraordinary treatment, 

The Milwaukee Journal would win no Pulitzer Prize for their coverage. They identified Dennis only as “an advertising executive”. The newspaper was a client of his firm, as was the state of Wisconsin.

It would be October before the city got around to charging Dennis Frankenberry, with reckless driving and leaving the scene of an accident. The October trial was quick. Dennis pled guilty as charged.  He was fined $300. 

And he was incarcerated. For 90 days. In fact he spent his nights in jail. His days were spent in his office, working on anti-drinking and driving public service ads which would count toward his court ordered 250 hours of public service. In other words he was serving his sentences concurrently. Dennis was also furloughed to spend weekends with his wife and children.  The hypocrisy was noted by a few Milwaukee journalist, despite the official blanket thrown over Dennis' transgression. It was true, as one author has pointed out, that “While outside the correctional facility, Frankenberry committed advertising, not kidnapping and rape.” Still his treatment was the exception.

After only 66 days Dennis was “released” for “good behavior”. That left only the court ordered restitution to his victims. In early January of 1987 the lawyers announced that Toby Gargardeski, awake but struggling to read again and having short term memory problems, was awarded $990,000, and Melcio Montemoyer, just beginning to deal with the nerve damage in his leg and foot, was awarded $250,000. According to the courts, justice had been served. The crippled Melcio explained to the few reporters who showed up, “If it had been me, I would have probably gotten a longer sentence...but then we're no big shots.”

The public service ads produced by Frankenberry, Laughlin and Constable would win awards,

bringing the agency and Dennis to the attention of some even “bigger shots”, who, despite Dennis' new reputation, invited them to come to Washington to submit ideas based on theme's suggested by Atwater and Ailes.

Frankenberry's team submitted four ads the Bush campaign decided to put into production. There was the “Boston Harbor” spot (above), attacking Dukakis' environmental record, which was far stronger than Bush's.  There was “Tax Blizzard” which threatened a flood of IRS missives pouring into a middle class family home, building on the “tax and spend Democrats” trope. And there was the “Oath of Allegiance” ad which implied that Micheal Dukakis was unpatriotic. But the one that interested Atwater and Ailes the most was Dennis' “Revolving Door” spot.

“The Revolving Door” did not mention William Horton or his crimes. Atwater and Ailes knew such a blatant racist attack (“n---er, n---er, n---er”) would cause a media blow back. But it could serve as cover for such and attack.  As Ailes told Ad Age magazine, “News is who has the hottest attack ads and who can get the highest ratings.”  The odd fact that the man who would help destroy the weekend parole system in American had himself benefited from that same system did not seem to bother any pf the participants.

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WORKING ON THE RAILROAD

I can't make up my mind about William Huskinson. “Tall, slouching, and ignoble-looking”, he was

considered one of the best economic brains in England, and represented Liverpool in Parliament as a Tory (the conservative party). At the same time he also agitated for liberal issues, like equal rights for Catholics and Jews and election reform. But it wasn't William's contrariety in politics that confuses me, it was the way he kept falling over things. While on his honeymoon in April of 1799, a horse fell on him. Two years later he dislocated an ankle. He had broken his right arm so many times it was almost useless But was this genial scarecrow just a klutz, or did his bumbling rise to the exalted level of ironic? It was certainly ironic that the Liverpool and Manchester Railway was built only because of the enthusiastic intervention of the sixty year old. But it was also the L and M which was responsible for William's brutal demise. When, I wonder, does unfortunate become ironic?

William was effective in English politics because he was almost universally liked. His official biography described him as “extremely agreeable...generally cheerful, with a great deal of humor, information, and anecdote...As a speaker in the House of Commons...he had no pretensions to eloquence; his voice was feeble, and his manner ungraceful.” Still, because of his brains and his sense of humor, people tended to like him - important people, like Granville Leveson-Gower (above), the richest man in England. In Scotland, Granville, aka the Duke of Sutherland , aka the Marquess of Stafford, is reviled for his wholesale evictions of highland farmers, but in England he was respected because....well, because he was the richest man in England, and because of the two things he had inherited from his in-laws - his talent for “absorbing heiresses” (he outlived three wives) and what he had inherited from his third' wife's uncle, the first “true canal” in England, the Bridgewater.

After its opening in 1761 the 39 mile long canal had cut the price of coal powering the linen mills in Manchester by half, while making the first Earl of Bridgewater very wealthy. In 1776 a connection was cut to the river Mersey which allowed the finished Manchester fabrics to be inexpensively shipped out of the port of Liverpool, the transport taking only 30 hours, and thus making the Earl even richer. So it was no surprise that Granville, who inherited the canal in 1803, was not anxious to see Manchester wool merchants build a railroad and cut into his profits. Even with the canal, it cost as much to move the finish garments to Liverpool as it had cost to ship the raw cotton from America. Granville successfully fought the railroad for years, until the Liverpool MP (minister to parliament),William Huskinson, suggested to his fiend that it might be more profitable joining the Manchester merchants rather then fighting them. With Wilkinson’s adroit assistance, a deal was struck. Granville became a partner in the railroad. And on Wednesday September 15, 1830, a gala grand opening was staged for the 35 mile long Liverpool to Manchester Railroad, including a “whistle stop” visit from the man who had beaten Napoleon, the Prime Minister and ex-political ally of William Huskinson, Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington.

As a politician the Duke (above) was the perfect model of modern major General. He gave ground where it cost him little, as when he urged the repeal of laws restricting Catholics. But he dug in against repeal of the infamous Corn Laws. These slapped taxes on any grain exports from England, and just made things worse for the starving Irish during the potato famine. But the “Iron Duke” was a landowner and willing to defend the Corn Laws to the last Irishman. William Huskinson grew so frustrated with the Duke, he resigned from the government. However his resignation had not driven the Duke to back down, and William was hoping the ceremonies around the opening of the railroad would give him a chance to repair his relationship with his old friend Wellesley.

The Manchester and Liverpool railroad was the invention of George Stephenson, who had even manufactured a prototype locomotive – the Rocket - for the system. Stephenson had insisted on two tracks, one southbound from Manchester to Liverpool, and the other northbound, so the line could safely carry twice as many trains. It was a good idea, but doubled the cost of construction. So Stephenson had saved money by placing all four of the rails equal distance apart. His rational was that this not only eliminated an enormous amount of grading, but should a train have to carry anything wider than eight feet, it could simply shift to the two center rails, providing more elbow room on either side. What Stephenson could not know was that as speeds increased in the future, passing carriages would create a lower air pressure between them, which, without more space between the rails, would suck the carriages into each other. That was one of the things experience would teach railroad engineers like Stephenson. And what happened this opening day, would teach them a few other things.

There were eight separate inaugural passenger trains which left Liverpool beginning at eleven that morning, The Duke's train was first on the southbound tracks, pulled by the 14 horse power engine Northumberland, and made up of a car carrying a band, followed by six carriages each with 12 to 24 passengers. In the carriage just in front of the Duke's sat William Huskinson with his wife Emily, and several important politicians. The other seven trains, with about 60 passengers per car, traveled on the northbound tracks, leap frogging the Duke's train, to provide numerous opportunities for all the celebrants to cheer and laugh and stare at the victor of Waterloo as the trains climbed their way the 35 miles uphill toward Manchester.

The trains all paused at Parkside station, an hour out of Liverpool and about half way to Manchester.

Here the Duke's train stopped, while the Phoenix and the North Star trains passed ("like the whizzing of a cannon ball", said the Duke) with many shouts and cheers, to wait a few hundred yards beyond the station. As the water tanks of the Northumberland was slowly refilled, about 50 men disembarked between the rails to stretch their legs and probably unload their personal water  tanks, in a light drizzle. William Holmes, the Chief Tory Whip suggested this would be a prime opportunity for William to bond with the Prime Minister, and Huskinson agreed. The two men walked the few yards back to the Duke's carriage where William extended a hand. The Duke, happy at seeing his old friend again, grasped William's hand firmly. They were about to speak when a shout went out, “"An engine is approaching, take care gentlemen!”

It was the Rocket, Stephenson's prototype, pulling another train of passenger cars. The driver, Joesph Locke saw the men on the tracks about 80 feet ahead of him. There was plenty of time, except the Rocket had no brakes. Locke threw the little engine into reverse. There was still ample time to avoid injury, unless you were a major klutz – guess who. All the other men in the way managed to easily escape, either being pulled into the Duke's car, or running the ten feet or so across the tracks. But William Huskinson could not make up his mind. Initially the Duke tried to lift the scarecrow into his car, but William yanked free and started to dash across the tracks. Then, abruptly he changed his mind and returned to the car's side. The Duke shouted, “"For God's sake, Mr Huskisson, be firm!" and grabbed for him again. But William dodged rescue and bolted across the tracks again. Some one threw open the door of the Duke's car suddenly, and William reversed course once again and jumped for the swinging support. He grabbed onto it just as the Rocket smashed it to smithereens. Huskinson, said eyewitness Harriet Arbuthnot, “was... thrown down and the engine passed over his leg and thigh, crushing it in a most frightful way. It is impossible to give an idea...of the piercing shrieks of his unfortunate wife, who was in the car (ahead).”

They dumped the band, because their car was the only one with a flat bottom, and carrying the right Honorable Huskinson on a door ripped off a track side shack, placed him gently aboard. The rest of the cars were then detached, Stephenson opened the throttles full, and the engine, the coal car, the wounded man and two doctors headed for Manchester at 40 miles an hour. Crowds cheered as the speeding machine raced past them. It was perhaps the fastest humans had ever traveled, except for the few unfortunates fired from a catapult. At this rate they would have made it to Manchester in less than half an hour, except ….except the clouds opened up and a storm broke upon the desperate mission. As they approached the little village of Eccles, less than four miles from Manchester, the conditions forced them to stop, supported by Huskinson who said he had a good friend in the village, the Reverend Thomas Blackburne. They managed to lug William up the steep slope to the village, dropping William a couple of times before depositing him on a couch in the vicarage. The Reverend Blackburne was not there, of course. He was in Manchester, waiting with the crowds to welcome the triumphant voyagers. Mrs. Blackburne, who was home, served tea.

“Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine" noted that back at Parkside station, after much discussion, “The final decision being in favor of advancing, seats were resumed, and we moved on; but ...the whole now wore the sombre aspect of a funeral procession. The military band was left to return as it could; I saw them, crest-fallen, picking their way homeward through the mud and mire...” At about nine that night William Huskinson died in a generous laudanum haze - generally considered the first man ever killed by a locomotive.  An inquest was opened the very next morning, but the instant the jury seemed to show an interest in any failure by railroad staff or design, it was pulled up by the coroner. Within a few hours, the verdict was “accidental death”. It does not seem Emily Huskinson agreed.

Half the population of Liverpool, about 69,000 people, attended William Huskinson''s funeral on Friday September 24, 1830. Emily did not. She never returned to Liverpool again, and died in 1856, never having traveled on a train again, either. Meanwhile the publicity surrounding the accident attracted passengers to the new rail line. In the next year half a million people rode the Liverpool and Manchester line at 7 shillings for the two hour round trip. All future locomotives built by George Stephenson were fitted with hand brakes, and he never again built a two track line with so little room for error between the rails. But the question remains unanswered to this day - was William Huskinson's death merely a  tragedy, or was it ironic?

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