 | CastleBee (81)
08/04/2007 | Of course I remember this psychopath...you tend not to forget the Mansons, Bundys, and Jim Joneses of the world. Unfortunately there seems to be no short supply of them regardless of the decade you're recalling.
(1 voted this helpful, 0 funny and 1 agree) |
 | edt4 (99)
05/10/2007 |  I've written about Jones elsewhere on this website, but I should mention here that a great new documentary has just been released that is showing on PBS-TV stations and is also available on Amazon. It is entitled "Jonestown- The Life and Death of People's Temple" and is extremely powerful. I was a teen when the story broke and it fascinated me for years afterward (on a trip to San Francisco, I had a picture taken of myself standing in front of the building that was People's Temple; I believe its since been torn down). This documentary brings back the full horror of what happened there with wrenchingly vivid force and, although I've become somewhat inured to the whole story over the ensuing decades (not because of callousness on my part, but I've seen every docu-drama that's come out about it over the years, and have read nearly every book), I found myself becoming emotional during parts of the film, as the impact of all those lives lost, of the tragic waste of it all, hit me anew. I can't recommend this documentary enough. If there is a hell, Jim Jones will be forced for eternity to listen to the dying screams and agonized wailing of all the children and babies he had murdered (and a sizeable portion of those who died in Jonestown were murdered).
(6 voted this helpful, 0 funny and 0 agree) |
 | oscargamblesfro (76)
05/10/2007 |  I was in the first or second grade when all of those people died at the whim of this lunatic. From what I've read and seen in televsion documentaries, Jones, a preacher from rural Indiana who moved to the Bay Area before going to the small country of Guyana when the heat started coming down as he got progressively weirder and more dictatorial, started out, OSTENSIBLY anyway, with good ideals such as social justice, combating racism, helping the poor and the ill, and what not, things that were, regardless of one's personal views about them, on everyone's mind in the 60's- though I'm sure he was probably a warped megalomaniac even then, even if he really believed what he said or not- it's awfully hard to fault the message, though it may be disingenuous, it's hard to rationalize being against those kinds of things.
Basically one in a long line of screwballs who fed on the fears of the delusional, and resorted to senseless violence.
If you're too young to remember this nut, the closest image I could give you would be to picture the brain of Charlie Manson inside the body of a 4th rate Elvis impersonator or that wrestler from the 80's known as the Honky Tonk Man. Evil, but certainly hard to forget.
(3 voted this helpful, 0 funny and 0 agree) |
