The article continued instead in a highpitched, chattering whine, with a list of phony statistics:
Founded in 1950 at Fontana, a steel town 50 miles east of Los Angeles, the club now
numbers about 450 in California. Their logbook of kicks runs from sexual perversion and
drug addiction to simple assault and thievery. Among them they boast 874 felony arrests,
300 felony convictions, 1,682 misdemeanor arrests and 1,023 misdemeanor convictions,
only 85 have ever served time in prisons or reform schools.
No act is too degrading for the pack. Their initiation rite, for example, demands that
any new member bring a woman or girl (called a „sheep”) who is willing to submit to sexual
intercourse with each member of the club. But their favorite activity seems to be terrorizing
whole towns…
Time then told the same Porterville invasion story that appeared simultaneously in
Newsweek. The article continued:
When they are not thus engaged, the Angels – sometimes accompanied by the young
children of a member or by the unmarried females who hang out with the club – often rent
a dilapidated house on the edge of a town, where they swap girls, drugs and motorcycles
with equal abandon. In between drug-induced stupors, the Angels go on motorcyclestealing forays, even have a panel truck with a special ramp for loading the stolen machines.
Afterward, they may ride off again to seek some new nadir in sordid behavior.
There was clearly no room for this sort of thing in the Great Society, and Time was
emphatic in saying it was about to be brought to a halt. These ruffians were going to be
taught a lesson by hard and ready minions of the Establishment. The article ended on a
note of triumph:
…all local law enforcement agencies have now been supplied with dossiers on each
member of the Hell’s Angels and on similar gangs, and set up a coordinated intelligence
service that will try to track down the hoods wherever they appear. „They will no longer be
allowed to threaten the lives, peace and security of honest citizens of our state,” said he
[Lynch]. To that, thousands of Californians shuddered a grateful amen.
No doubt there was some shuddering done in California that week, but not all of it
was rooted in feelings of gratitude. The Hell’s Angels shuddered with perverse laughter at
the swill that had been written about them. Other outlaws shuddered with envy at the
Angels’ sudden fame. Cops all over California shuddered with nervous glee at the prospect
of their next well-publicized run-in with any group of motorcyclists. And some people
shuddered at the realization that Time had 3,042,902 readers.