But her uncle, William Randolph Hearst, Jr., editor-in-chief of the Hearst newspaper chain, flew in from the East Coast to warn his family that the entire corporate image of the Hearst empire was at stake and they'd better hire an establishment attorney--fast. Enter F. Lee Bailey. He had defended a serial killer, the Boston Strangler, and a war criminal, Captain Harold Medina from the My Lai massacre, but he said he would not defend Patty Hearst if she were a revolutionary. You've gotta have standards.

Bailey and his partner, Albert Johnson, visited with Patty for a couple of hours at San Mateo County Jail in order to encourage her to tell the psychiatrists everything and not say, "I have no recollection." She could trust these doctors, they assured her, and nothing she said could be used against her in any way. Now her defense would be based on the Stockholm Hostage Syndrome. Patty had been kidnapped again.

Brainwashing does exist. Built into the process is the certainty that one has not been brainwashed. Patty's obedience to her defense team paralleled her obedience to the SLA. The survival syndrome had simply changed hands. F. Lee Bailey was Cinque in whiteface. Instead of a machine-gun, he owned a helicopter company--Enstrom, an anagram for Monster. Instead of taping underground communiqués, he held press conferences. It was all show biz.

There had been a rumor that Patty was pregnant by Cinque. Indeed, one of the first questions that Randolph Hearst asked when he met sports figure Jack Scott--who had supposedly seen Patty on the lam--was to ascertain if that rumor was true. I wrote in the Berkeley Barb: "Now, with their daughter on trial, the Hearsts have hired a lawyer who wears pancake make-up to press conferences, the better to transform a racist fear into a Caucasian alibi."

I received this letter by certified mail:

Dear Sir:

You undoubtedly did not realize that the name "Pan-Cake Make-Up" is the registered trademark (U.S. Patent Office No. 350,402) of Max Factor & Co., and is not a synonym for cake make-up. The correct usage is "Pan-Cake Make-Up," capitalized and written in just that manner, or, under circumstances such as these, where you obviously did not intend to mention a particular brand, simply cake make-up.

We are sure that you are aware of the legal importance of protecting a trademark and trust that you will use ours properly in any future reference to our product, or, in the alternative, will use the proper generic term rather than our brand name. So that our records will be complete, we would appreciate an acknowledgment of this letter.

Very truly yours,
Max Factor & Co.
D. James Pekin Corporate Counsel

In response, I explained that there had been a slight misunderstanding--what F. Lee Bailey had been wearing to all those press conferences was actually Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix--and I hoped that cleared up the matter.

It was not an easy task for Stephen Cook to report about the trial of his boss' daughter, what with the boss sitting right there in the front row of the courtroom to oversee him, but he didn't spare his employer from embarrassing testimony, and, to the Examiner's credit, he was not censored. However, Dick Alexander, who was writing feature material on the trial for the Examiner, had his copy changed so drastically that he requested his byline be dropped.

On the first day of the trial, he wore a tie with the legendary Fuck You emblazoning the design. Randolph Hearst chastised him for this, but Alexander continued to wear the tie. Perhaps it reminded Hearst of the time Patty screamed, "Fuck you, Daddy!" in his office. A syndicated cartoon by Lichty--with the caption, "I don't know whether she was brainwashed, but she should certainly have her mouth washed out with soap!"--appeared only in the first edition of the Examiner.

The trial was also grist for the TV entertainment mill. On the Merv Griffin show, the audience voted 70-30 that Patty was guilty as charged. On Maude, the British maid studying for her citizenship test had to answer the question, "Who said, 'Give me liberty or give me death'?" She was given a hint that the initials were P.H. She did not guess Patrick Henry, but Patty Hearst. And Johnny Carson in his opening monologue wondered whether F. Lee Bailey would get Lockheed off "for kidnapping our money."

Soap-opera actress Ruth Warrick, who starred in Citizen Kane, revealed, "My name was not printed in any Hearst paper for five years after that film was released. I could be the star of a movie and my name couldn't even be mentioned in the ads in Hearst papers."

Patty had never seen Citizen Kane, particularly not while on the run, because it would've been too embarrassing to be caught there. Throughout her trial, there was a screen set up in the court, but instead of Orson Welles, over and over and over again, like some recurring nightmare, Patty would view footage of herself helping to rob the Hibernia Bank. One witness at the bank had been convinced that it was merely an episode for Streets of San Francisco and that Patty was just an actress.

Nancy Faber of People magazine became the unofficial courtroom fashion advisor. If you wanted to find out exactly what color Patty's pantsuit was, Faber would know that it was Iranian Rust. But while Patty was wearing light-brown eye shadow, or pearl-gray nail polish to indicate that she didn't have the hands of a criminal, the San Quentin Six were appearing before their jury each day in shackles and leg irons. Shana Alexander was the only journalist who skipped a day at the Patty Hearst trial to attend the San Quentin Six trial.