Woodstock: After years of conservative propaganda, do liberals hate Hippies enough now?

http://whytheysuck.com/?p=107



You have to swallow some disinformation to think Woodstock was a pinnacle event in the Sixties counter-culture. Where I cannot praise drug use myself, Liberals and Democrats should think carefully before they join Conservatives in denigrating that generation. An invitation to eat your own children should be looked upon at least with suspicion.

First, Woodstock was just a side-show to what actually went on, and it wasn't the event that "defined" the generation. No, that generation had been defined by the previous year. It wasn't near anywhere the top of the Sixties counter-cultural accomplishments, which were, first, that they stopped the Vietnam War, and second they brought down Nixon. They changed the direction of this country-- from the mismanagement by that WWII generation, who were, by then, applying all the wrong lessons from WWII. (The boomers also had considerable social accomplishments after that, but that is a different story.)

Conservatives have never forgiven the '60s counter-culture, and they have attacked it vehemently ever since. Their tireless vendetta has done more harm to our country than Woodstock could ever do. For example, I'm convinced that cuts in student aid in the late '70s and were then were deepened under Reagan were made out vindictiveness the Vietnam protests. Those vindictive cuts are screwing us now, when we have few people with advanced degrees. Why? Because unless your rich, or worthy of a full-scholarship, an advanced degree will start you $50-to-100 thousand dollars in debt.

For all their flaws, the hippies were far better than the next generations. The eighties saw the Jack Abramoff young-Republican generation-- the Yuppies, known for their pharisaic avarice, social cynicism, and cultural baseness, but they belittled the Hippies. Let's see, which is better, Woodstock, or trips to Angola by Young Republicans for veneration of that great anti-communist hero, (and repressive, bloodstained dictator) Jonas Savimbi. Let's not forget the praise and the undying support of the Apartheid government in South Africa. Compared to that, shagging in the mud high on acid at Woodstock is a grand cultural and social accomplishment. (No, not really, but it wasn't nearly as damaging.)

Woodstock was no more or less than it seemed. It was an entertainment event and business venture that was widely over-promoted beforehand, and then extremely mismanaged. Before derivatives, very few people could say they mismanaged their business so badly that they almost created a humanitarian crisis, but the Woodstock Ventures nearly did just that.

Therefore, it distresses me when Liberals and Democrats join Conservatives in a 60s-hate-in, especially when presented with Woodstock and its audience. Be fair. You can't really fault the hippies at Woodstock because they couldn't know what they were going to be getting into before they arrived. It was miracle that people managed to put a half-million people together like that with almost no shelter, sanitation, or supplies to support them, but they stayed peaceful and cooperated with each other. It could have been a catastrophe with thousands dead. To avoid that, I don't care if the people took drugs and had public sex to do it. Social engineers should make a case study of Woodstock, and its lessons may apply to any refugee situation. (Yes, maybe . . .)

As for it being a good time, I think a saying applies: the best adventures are usually great mis-adventures recalled later in comfortable surroundings. Those responsible for the Woodstock fiasco had to try to recoup some of their dough, so they had to sell the Woodstock documentary, and praise the concert as some kind of great cultural event. This doesn't make it so. Woodstock was a side-show to what really happened in the Sixties.

and it still does: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=472639&mesg_id=472639

they believe the propaganda on many fronts, so this would not be a stretch

Many Democrats still don't see how powerful Conservative propaganda has been, and it how it has misinformed them about the facts. I respect hippies. Yes, they might have used too many drugs, became too indulgent with them, and many blew their minds out with them, but they were the first generation to really question society's overwhelming disdain for drugs. Unfortunately, that was to consume many of them, but they couldn't know that at the time, nor could anyone else have found it for sure if they weren't willing to question and experiment.

Secondly, they were fundamentally different than any generation in this country prior. For good or bad, they were the first generation raised by the television. The TV probably had more influence on them than their families and churches.

After stopping Vietnam and having Nixon to resign, the Sixties generation went on to crusades that fundamentally changed and improved our culture, largely due to their work as journalists in questioning things society hadn't questioned before. Domestic violence, for example, had been a dirty open secret all the time, and the '60s generation finally had it treated as a major social problem. They shined the light on child abuse, a crime that had apparently been going on unabated for centuries. Drunk driving: before the boomers, it wasn't really a crime, it your excuse if you had a hit and run. "He was drunk," they'd say. People drove drunk all the time before that. I actually remember when the first "sexual harassment" story broke. Tom Snyder had the woman on the show that brought the first complaint. The only reason to have her on there was because it had never been done before. Sheesh, I can list other things. They all had their roots in Sixties counter-culture, and its strong emphasis on questioning society.

Don't think that if conservatives had their way these wouldn't be things that they would reverse, though they hardly champion them as issues, they really sneer at them under their cynical, collective breath.

I really can't find it me to knock my generation, and there's no way liberals ever should.

with me, but that muddy concert weekend was hardly a trans formative cultural event, despite what Abby Hoffman and Mike Lang wished it to be. No, what turned my brother into a journalist with a conscience had much more to do with progressive parents and the kind of attitude adjustment that happens when you get tear gassed, clubbed and arrested at civil rights and peace demonstrations. Or see friends come home in flag draped coffins from a war on the other side of the world. Remember there was Draft. The awful summer of 1968 had happened. Woodstock was not the defining moment of a drug dazed generation: Civil Rights organizing and ending the insane Vietnam War, and toppling a crazy Republican president, THOSE were the defining 'moments' of a very clear-eyed generation. IMHO

I never did drugs, or drank, or raised any kind of hell. I was a responsible teenager along with my brothers and sisters and many of my friends.

And I am sick and tired of hearing about it, too, but that's beside the point.

What I am saying is, Woodstock has been hyped as something culturally significant simply to make a buck. It has then been used by Conservatives as a way of attacking the Sixties counter-culture, and from there, liberalism in general. Liberals seem to join in on that, not noticing that they are attacking themselves. What I am saying is: don't believe the hype and gripe. Woodstock was not a culturally significant event for the time. It was an oddity. That's why I am tired of hearing about it.

Moreover, it is not anything that should be used to attack that generation. Woodstock was more the fault of a business than of the hippies involved. Why do Conservatives always forget this?

It's absolutely fair to attack the '60s generation for excessive drug use, but that is dwarfed by its accomplishments, which might not seem as spectacular as WWII, I'd call them very respectable, but they stopped a war that was killing millions of people. They did this by opposing an entrenched generation made calloused by the slaughter of WWII.

My parents are boomers and they weren't hippies, my dad saw the Beatles though. I grew up in the 80s and was into hardcore/punk rock. The hippies and Reagan were the enemies of that culture. I guess I still cant stand either of them.

That's why the 40 years of demonization. People don't get it. Hippies=sew you own clothes=shop at thrift stores=grow your own food= SHARE

Every industry in the country went berserk.

People always focus on the cultural issues. But hippies were a economic issue too. They were trend setters and they could have ruined the boomer consumer plan.

Boomers 72 million and they were just supposed to be turned into empty-headed consumers. I don't know why they'll still mad. They pretty much won.

I think the corporations are just trying to kill the last trace of spirit. They're probably afraid it might surface again.

People who bash hippies don't know what really happened. The CIA attacked them alot. Endless ops..

http://www.whale.to/b/brussell1.html

I watched a documentary last weekend called, "The U.S. vs. John Lennon" on VH1 (if you can believe it).

They went to great lengths to explain Lennon and why he scared the pants off of the Status-quo. Most of the points you make resonate with what was discussed... and I think it's true.

There were many reasons for TPTB to fear Lennon... By far the greatest were 1) He was not beholden to TPTB for anything. and 2) There was a true Intellectual Power behind the points he made.

I cite the comparison with Lennon because, IMHO... He exemplified the 60's movement... and he did it all with words and song.

Now, where are we going to find someone with principles as strong to champion a real HCR? :shrug:

Although it's merely a minor sign, I remember at the time that kids would remove all the labels from their clothing, even the tiny "Levi's" tag on the jeans. I was incredulous in the Eighties when that all reversed, and labels became fashion features.

overall ideals good and bad, thereby throwing the baby out with the bath water resulted in a devolution of the American Citizens' awakening global/humanitarian consciousness in to that of human locusts.

As a result the Earth is becoming literally steamed about this turn of events and now life as we know is under grave peril from our own short sighted, materialistic based, money is God myopia.

Edit for P.S. One accusation against the Hippies was, they weren't responsible; just living for the day and look what came to pass from their successful critics, the total disregard of the looming catastrophe from global warming climate change, the greatest natural threat; humanity has ever faced, the irony boggles the mind, it would be funny if it weren't so tragic.

Whereas you're right that corporations hated the Sixties Counter-culture, they really did not have much of a problem selling to it and subverting it once they found the right messages and strategies. (Remember "It's The Pepsi Generation?/ Comin' at you/ Goin' strong?")

In fact, the counter-culture shared one fatal flaw with the rest of the Boomers relating to consumerism. It may have been vehemently anti-commercial, anti-capitalist, and environmentalist, it was also the first generation raised on commercial television-- meaning that it was the first to be groomed from the cradle to be sold to. So, for industries, all that had to be done was to find the message and marketing strategy, and there was no problem selling products, especially when targeted marketing was really becoming almost a science then. The demand for recreational drugs by the counter-culture could probably tell you that its consumer market was alive and well, and ready to be marketed to, even from unconventional sources. In other words, they might have been anti-consumerist, but psychologically, they were too vulnerable to it. This lead to a sense of self-betrayal, alienation, and finally the collapse.

Their environmentalism was more problematic for industries, and industries wouldn't have a good answer to that till the eighties.

You have to remember that the Right isn't just corporate interests (though corporate and wealthy interest manipulate the other factions the most). Different factions on the Right had different reasons for hating the hippies. While the Conservative movement was coalescing and forming its plans, these factions all played on each others' hatreds, and used that anger to unify the movement, and it fruition in electing Ronald Reagan.

For Veterans and the Military: the Hippies protested the Vietnam and "lost the war." To the Generation that identified itself most by its military service in WWII and Korea, that had come to fear communism as an almost omnipotent evil, this was unforgivable. (I believe that generation was actually very traumatized by those wars, and has since been somewhat insane-- hence Vietnam. War warps the minds even of those who give orders. (The poster child for this is Robert McNamara, who was instrumental in the firebombing of Japan, which probably killed more than a million people, and then was instrumental in running the Vietnam War, which killed more than 3 million people. I begin to think he lost his conscience in 1944, and should have never held a role in government after that.)

For the working, middle-class: the Hippies totally threw off the ironclad social restraints that terrorized the previous generation. Consider the homophobic atmosphere society lived under before that, and how it defined everything about how a guy lived, how he had sex, his relation with his family, and how he dressed. For a man to wear bright colors and long hair (whether he was gay or not) showed an unconcern for the unwritten rules of conduct, and also what constituted mens' greatest fear at the time. There were other things, like not shaving every day, showing either an unconcern for what everyone else sees, or a laziness. The middle class responded with suspicion, and a disdain that perhaps was founded on envy more than anything.

For the religious traditionalists: the Hippies, of course, popularized Eastern religion and mysticism into the US. This did not enamor them to traditionalists. The sexual culture was even more offensive. Even though, contrary to popular myth, the US sexuality in the fifties was hardly restrained by values when it came to heterosexuality, (homosexuality was something different, and also sex in the media was a different issue), the Sixties Counterculture took the blame for lowering the morals of society.

The wealthy class: well, of course they hated Hippies.

When all of these factions were pulling together into the modern Conservative movement, they all cross-pollinated their anger, and by that time, liberals and ex-hippies lost confidence and became alienated from the political process. It was huge mistake, because it left Republicans in charge of it.

Nice post.

Besides ending the war in Vietnam, and bringing down Nixon, the boomers played a major role in ending the system of American apartheid known as segregation. Tens of thousands of them worked for racial justice, some of them--for example James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman--paid with their lives. Add to that the growth of the women's movement, and gay rights, and you'll see that the differences between 1950s America and today are little short of incredible.

And I've always felt the "Greatest Generation" romanticizing of WWII era Americans played into the conservative theme of the '60s being a time of degeneracy and decline, which then gets used to paint progressive activism in general as self-indulgent excess. Besides which, if any single American generation deserves the title "the Greatest Generation" it would be that cohort of Americans who fought 1855 to 1865 to preserve the Union and end slavery. In terms of sheer sacrifice--of lives lost and shattered--the struggle faced by the generation coming of age in that era dwarfs anything that came before or since.

This "Greatest Generation" meme also glosses over some of the worst failures of mid-20th century America. The persistence of American apartheid is one, another is the fact that--for all our glorification of those who fought in WWII--it should be remembered that the war wouldn't have been necessary if Americans hadn't been so "isolationist" to begin with. In fact, prior to Pearl Harbor a majority of Americans wanted no part in any fight against fascism. Even after Pearl Harbor, a solid percentage of the US population wanted to fight Japan and not Germany, to the point that FDR on December 8th didn't feel able to ask for a Congressional declaration of war on Germany or Italy. It was only on December 11, 1941--after Hitler had declared war on the US--that the US Congress approved a declaration of war against the European fascists.

As Orwell said, "He who controls the past controls the present."

Progressives need to do what we can to take back our history.

And welcome to DU. :)

Thank you for adding such good points to it.

The hype about "the Greatest Generation" is far more overdone than Woodstock. That same generation got us into Vietnam because of what they experienced in WWII. And we've allowed Conservatives to denigrate the Boomers for getting us out.
There is no credit from Conservatives about ending Apartheid, domestically or in South Africa, because they don't care about it. They joined in after it was a done deal and then cheer that it was done.

I was slightly acquainted with one person who accepted the label, but everyone else I knew would have vehemently denied it. They were writers, artists, alternative publishers -- they were the counter-culture. They weren't hippies.

I had one friend who lived in a sixth-floor walkup in the East Village, sold plastic flowers on street corners, and was my main source of information on Woodstock, since I'd avoided it myself. (She said she thought she was very brave to have taken the mescaline that was being handed around, since she had no idea where it had come from or what it really was.) But if you tried to call her a hippie, she'd explain in great detail why she was no such thing.

Maybe things were different in California, but on the East Coast, "hippie" at the time basically referred to 17 year old runaways and deadbeat panhandlers. Anybody who had actual work to do was not a hippie.

One of the achievements of right-wing propaganda has been to create the false reality that "hippies" were the standard-bearers of the 60's counter-culture. But that simply was not the case. They were hangers-on, at best.

1. the Timothy Leary "look inward" drop outs

vs.

2. the Abbie Hoffman-Jerry Rubin f*ck ups, essentially anarchists, against both the government AND big business.

What the counter-culture succeeded at was re-defining personal success from a narrow range of choices--straight, male, corporate, buttoned up, conformist.

What they utterly failed at was reshaping a lasting progressive movement. Progressivism is stronger now than it was then.

Look at who's President.

In the Midwest where I was living, I think it referred to more of the dress style the person had and the slang they adopted. (Probably, also, the drugs that they used). I thought it became more of an insult there by the mid-1970s, but of course, in the Midwest it had to be considered insulting.

Hippies might have been the word for "hangers-on," but what do we call members of the Sixties counter-culture now? The previous generation called members of their counter-culture "Beatniks" and I don't know if that was an insulting term to them.

Language doesn't always cooperate with us here. I didn't mean to use a term that was generally insulting to them.

But I have an afterthought: part of the Sixties counter-culture was a contempt for labels. So maybe I should have expected that the term could be insulting to them even now.

Ended a corporate-backed war.

Brought in Civil Rights.

Without the 60's movement, we wouldn't have a black president.

Oh Yeah. And really great music.

I think we did okay.

No liberals don't hate hippies. Just like many hippies were really future corporatists who were only trying to be cool during the sixties, many of today's "liberals" are just trying to be cool and with it. They fall way too easily for the neocon media constructs. They like to complain about things like unions and the "far" left. Give them ten years and they will be campaigning for newt.

this jackass used Tommy James and the Shondells as an important band. For anyone who was around they were bubblegum music and never part of the generation

was a time of broad-spectrum change. Our society had become static with routine and formalities. Many people were suffering from discrimination and poverty, while others felt that life was empty and without meaning. Through the turbulence of the time came improvements in civil rights, along with spiritual awakenings that resulted in a "we" consciousness, rather than a "me" consciousness. And yes, humanitarian values threatened those who were grasping for the big bucks. It was a necessary time of great social accomplishment, and then it changed. And I suppose THAT change was important too. If nothing else, the greed of the last 25 years have taught us that life lived solely for that end can bring down a nation and a world.