It seems only fair before I get too into the weeds here to just give you the facts of the con. I don’t really see any point in keeping anyone waiting through four hours of a South Park-esque presentation for something that really only takes maybe 1-2 hours and two or three documents to get to the core of it all.
Here are some links for a bit of light reading that gave me a good idea of what this debacle was all about:
“Libertarian of the Month Ripoff Dept.” (The Libertarian Forum, Monthly Newsletter, May 1975, page 7)
Caselaw: PEOPLE v. CARMICHAEL (Court of Appeal, Second District, Division 2, California, Decided: May 23, 1980)
“A Dale For Sale…By Hook or By Crook” by John Pashdag (Motor Trend Magazine, July 1975 part 1)
“Liz Carmichael’s Dale Deal, Part 2” by John Pashdag (Motor Trend Magazine, August 1975 part 2)
As I write this blog, I will be using the names “Jerry” and “Liz” as interchangeably as the pronouns “he” or “she” depending on the time frame I’m referring to.
For the record, I do not personally believe that gender played a role in the Dale Con.
Of course, I can say that looking back with a 21st century lens. Back in 1975, I do not think that people knew how to articulate what Liz’s trans identity meant to this scheme. I do not think that was devious on their part. You just don’t know what you don’t know. It is easy to judge people looking back but remember that there were no prominent LGBTQ organized groups back then. No gender-neutral pronouns. No TV show like Transparent. No Caitlyn Jenner or Elliot Page to be the poster girl or boy to open their lives online as everyone watched their transition.
As the decades passed, it wasn’t like anyone got any better talking about it and so I think it’s important to recognize that it wasn’t until fairly recently that the trans community themselves found those voices to educate society on just how they would prefer to be recognized and addressed.
It is 2021 and we are still learning. Still evolving. Learning what it means to be inclusive. Trying to understand how to be better at this.
But in 1975, everyone seemed to be really winging it. I do not think even those in the trans community knew how to address any of this and they certainly wanted nothing to do with a con artist like Liz Carmichael.
The things we know about Liz today in 2021 are the things that everyone else was learning and writing about in real time in 1975, 1980, 1989, and 1991. They were working with the information they had. Information which they couldn’t look up on their iPhone through a Google search or a Wikipedia entry. Information that was often just word of mouth. We must keep this in mind when we look and judge at how her gender was reported in those days.
I have people in my life who knew Liz personally and said they knew the moment she walked in the door that she was trans. Liz herself is reported as saying that she knew people could see that she did not always pass as female. She just asked that people “be kind”. Live and let live. I get that.
I will talk more about how Jerry came to be Liz in another post. One that will give it the thoughtful discussion it deserves. For now, I’ll just say that I think where things get murky here with Liz’s transness is that back in the day to be trans was seen (for all the reasons mentioned above) as someone’s attempt to be something they weren’t. It was seen as a form of deception.
To put it plainly, being trans was seen as a con.
So therein lies the problem for Liz. She was trans. She was a con artist.
She was a trans person who happened to also be a con artist, which made this con all that much easier to pull off. As a society we don’t tend to “live and let live” when it comes to con artists. There’s no free pass based on gender or identity.
That’s why for me, the only thing that has mattered was understanding how the con happened. What makes someone so selfish? How do we find ourselves in someone else’s web of lies? How does someone flee and leave such massive wreckage behind?
Liz was a con artist. So was Jerry before her.
But identifying as female? That may be one of the only truths Liz Carmichael ever told.
That’s what keeps people coming back to this one time and time again.
It has a little something for everyone in it.
Something shiny and new. Promises of hope during a crisis. A heroine come to save the day. The mob. The media. Investigations. Murder. Mystery. The Police. Theft. Fraud. Then the big reveal just in time for the circus to begin.
But wait, there’s more…
Sometimes it seems like this will never end. It’s finally time to stop playing fast and loose with the facts of this confidence game. To stop holding back all the relevant information like HBO’s “The Lady and the Dale” documentary has recently done. In her February 14, 2021 Entertainment Weekly interview, “The Lady and the Dale” co-director Zachary Drucker is reported as saying: “we crafted this series to provoke questions and to provoke critical thought. We want people to have that question. Was the Dale Liz’s shot at redemption? Was this her trying to be legit and to have a legitimate enterprise?”
No, no, and oh yeah, no.
But of course she knows all that already because she’s seen the FBI files, court documents, has interviewed people involved at the time, spoken to engineers, seen the car in person, and read the enormous amount of newspaper and magazine articles that were written at the time, which are available for anyone to find.
Never mind the facts. They just get in the way of the story.
I’ll be damned if I sit back and do nothing while opportunistic people put together an animated cartoon show and turn a con artist into a heroine 46 years after she selfishly destroyed the lives of everyone around her.
The Dale Con 