Word: silkwoods
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...ultimate tragedy of stories like Silkwood's lie in their very appeal. Crucified for a popular cause, crowned with a garland of public approval, these "martyrs" ascend into the realm of legend. Their names become watchwords for the faithful, but the details of their struggles are lost in political rhetoric and strife. Their stories are invoked without being remembered, and many who write about them sensationalize--relying solely on an inherent emotional appeal to those who do not wish to believe. Such works are often dismissed as propaganda...
...title and opening chapter of Rashke's The Killing of Karen Silkwood suggest that he too has been seduced by this temptation, but the remaining 400 pages bely this initial impression. The book's greatest strength lies in that Rashke is a rusader but he is not afraid of facts. Shunning the emotional, he explores in depth the allegations and evidence on all sides of the Silkwood saga. What emerges is a clear and well-documented case, which strongly suggests that Silkwood's death was not purely accidental, and that the cover-up involved not only Kerr-McGee...
Drawing on his experience as an investigative reporter. Rashke carries the reader though the early years of Silkwood's life, the months she spent at Kerr-McGee, the FBI and Senate hearings that followed her death, and ultimately the battle in federal court. He describes her married and personal life, her use of prescribed quaaludes as a sedative, and her leading role in the fight for union represenation at Kerr-McGee's Cimarron plant. All of these factors become important later, when Rashke examines company and FBI portrayals of Silkwood as an emotionally disturbed, sexually promiscuous drug addict, who poisoned...
...evidence points in one direction: Kerr McGee was grossly neglig ent in its handling of the plutonium. Plant executives resented Silkwood's attempts to publicize the unsafe working conditions. Karen Silkwood was mentally competent, emotionally stable and awake on the November day when her white Honda slid across the road and crashed into a culvert. The investigations that followed were both cursory and inadequate. More tenuous but still plausible, is his contention that someone tried to prevent Silkwood from delivering her evidence, and inadvertently ran her off the road...
...effort to sound authoritative, Rashke gets bogged down in miniscule details of little significance. Into a book already saturated with facts and figures, Rashke throws in the bills charged by wrecking companies years before, the shape and size of folders and notebooks, and the life histories of individuals Silkwood met for two hours. In a book devoid of details, these facts would add realism. Instead, they make Rashke's book read at times like a lawyer's brief or a set of raw detective notes...