In January 2005, the Grapevine published an article on Prussian Blue – 13-year-old white power folk music twins Lynx and Lamb Gaede, based on our shock at the twins’ success, and on the revelation, at the time, that the twins had an Icelandic grandparent, and that this played a role in their white power movement. Since that time, the twins’ popularity has grown, including segments on ABC news.
This June, the twins were thrust further into the spotlight when their Icelandic connection became clear. It turns out, the new face of white power has an Icelandic grandparent because their dad is an Icelander, Kris Lingelser. And this June, he sued for custody.
Lingelser and April Gaede were divorced in 1997, with the latter claiming domestic violence and drug abuse was rife in their marriage. Not much was heard from him since then, until last October. At that time, Gaede was receiving so much national coverage that she bragged to GQ magazine, “[National television show] Primetime mainstreamed us! I don’t think a white-pride band has ever gotten this kind of media attention before. I mean, these two girls have become some of the most powerful people in white nationalism,” and crowed about how Paula Zahn Live and the Dr. Phil Show had left messages on her voice mail. Apparently, this was enough to inspire Lingelser to renounce his drugging, wife-beating, racist ways and fight to regain custody of the girls.
“I would hope that they could see that a white separatist attitude, where whites and blacks and Mexicans and everybody needs to live in their own separate universe, is not healthy,” Lingelser told ABC last month. “It’s not what this country is about, it’s not what I’m about. I would just hope that they could see that.”
The custody battle has apparently been hard on Lamb and Lynx, who penned — true to form — a wincingly tuneless cat turd, this one entitled “Daddy”, which they made available online on 17 June. A sample lyric:
Mine was never there for me
Yours is always there, you see
There is a great past you’ll find
I try to leave my past behind
But it’s broken. It’s broken.
So please don’t take for granted,
Please don’t take for granted
Your Daddy.
Sure, the girls are being home-schooled through textbooks that Gaede proudly asserts are from the 1950s. Their father figure – Gaede’s common-law husband and Bakersfield, California high school teacher Mark Harrington – is husband number three, although she is openly courting a new beau and detailing their adventures on racist websites. And yes, there’s that whole business about being raised to believe that whites are the master race. But does this constitute an inadequate environment in which to raise a child?
Apparently not. Last June, a judge ruled in favour of Gaede, although he did allow Lingelser limited visitation rights. ABC also reported that “the attorney representing the girls’ father, Kim Aguirre, is the same attorney who claims he was shot and wounded on his way to court in another custody case.” This may explain why all of the Grapevine’s usually Clancy-esque methods of getting anyone’s most personal contact information failed to find so much as Lingelser’s last valid address (although we were able to locate him in the placings roster for the 2005 Carlsbad Marathon).
So there you have it: being an alleged drug/wife abuser nearly ten years ago does indeed make you a worse parent than a promiscuous racist who home-schools material from the McCarthy era.