Radical Chic and Film

Bruce Thornton on Hollywood's celebration of "social bandits." An excerpt:

And here we come upon the monstrous lie at the heart of Bonnie and Clyde. The historical Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker were not beautiful Robin Hoods but psychopathic killers — Clyde had jug-ears and a weak chin, Bonnie the mean mouth and ferret eyes of a white-trash skank. Their sexual proclivities, which included their younger male accomplices, were sordid, not romantic, and their violence was usually an unprovoked pleasurable indulgence, like their killing of two highway patrol officers on Easter Sunday in 1934. Their 12 victims were mostly police officers who, in accord with the laws Barrow and Parker scorned, announced themselves as such before they were gunned down in cold blood. Nor did the gang rob that many banks, their targets just as often being small mom-and-pop stores. As for distributing the money to the “people” — those scenes in the film were actually based on anecdotes about John Dillinger — there is no evidence that these predators ever gave a dime to the victims of the Depression, some of whom the pair robbed.