Re: TV: Did you make Barry's List?
I have sympathy for the townspeople of Antelope. They weren't really given the opportunity to ignore the cult, the cult showed up and forced themselves on the town, and the people. They didn't stay to themselves on their compound, they actively antagonized the locals, and made their lives worse.
There was plenty of blame to go around.
Let's be candid, they looked like a group of freaks. Certainly to rural townspeople of Oregon, but pretty much anywhere else as well.
I really wonder what would have happened if they had been allowed to set up and incorporate their own city and basically keep it as an independent municipality to be run by themselves. They didn't really start moving on Antelope until they felt they had no choice if they wanted to have a City.
Personally, I think there would have been no problems with Antelope had they been permitted to do that, but ultimately there would still have been conflict with the County and the State. The County and State would have the need to enforce planning and zoning issues and so on, and I'm not sure this group would have ever felt comfortable letting an agency they don't control tell them what to do.
At the end of the day, the people of Oregon got what they wanted -- to run the cult out of the state. To accomplish this they actually had to ignore or look past some pretty serious criminal conduct. Who else gets to conspire to kill a U.S. attorney, attempt to murder someone, conspire to poison the water supply of a town, actually poison public restaurant salad bars, engage in immigration fraud, drug bus loads of homeless people when they no longer serve your purpose, and a host of other crimes, and get to walk after about 3 years in jail? Only someone you really want out of the country because they are weird.
On the other hand, the US government certainly didn't do itself proud. Spent who knows how many hundreds of thousands of dollars chasing Osha's Lear jets across the country to prevent his escape, then return him to Oregon on a flight from hell that took eight days and involved stops in a dozen U.S. cities, all just to torture him. Then, when they get him back to Oregon he offers to plead guilty if they'll let him leave the country, and they say OK?!?!
I loved it when a reporter asks why go to all the trouble and expense to prevent him from leaving in the Lear jets if the whole goal was to deport him. The U.S. official basically says "we don't work that way." W T F?
It was a very aggravating documentary series to watch.
