Boatcop
10-30-2007, 11:25 AM
From the AZ Republic:
The museum to nowhere
Oct. 30, 2007 12:00 AM
A part of the legacy of the little music festival at Yasgur's Farm in 1969 is that if you remember the fun everyone had at the three days of frolic called Woodstock, you weren't really there.
You, ahem, get our meaning, no doubt.
Lots of people, including plenty who weren't there, revel in Woodstock's time-frozen legacy of music, as well as the self-affirming joy of being young and rebellious and all that other stuff that baby boomers will never let us forget.
Others don't. At least not enough to ask taxpayers to help memorialize it. Earlier this month, the Senate stripped out a $1 million earmark for the $100 million Woodstock memorial from a Labor/Health and Human Services spending bill.
"It may be a nice thing for some people to visit to relive their memories of the good old days, but frankly, it's a handout from taxpayers," said Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl, who led a clever campaign to nix the Woodstock funding. Kyl proposed the money be shifted to a block grant for children and pregnant women.
The sponsors, including New York Democratic Sens. Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton, may have been filled with Woodstock whimsy but not that much. Both had received substantial campaign contributions from the Woodstock memorial's coordinator . . . after the earmark had been inserted. That made denying additional funding for the health of women and kids, even in behalf of the greatest event in the history of stoners, an even bigger publicity bummer.
For the record, both of Arizona's GOP senators missed attending Woodstock.
As Sen. John McCain, a former prisoner of war, told an audience at a presidential debate, "I was tied up at the time."
The museum to nowhere
Oct. 30, 2007 12:00 AM
A part of the legacy of the little music festival at Yasgur's Farm in 1969 is that if you remember the fun everyone had at the three days of frolic called Woodstock, you weren't really there.
You, ahem, get our meaning, no doubt.
Lots of people, including plenty who weren't there, revel in Woodstock's time-frozen legacy of music, as well as the self-affirming joy of being young and rebellious and all that other stuff that baby boomers will never let us forget.
Others don't. At least not enough to ask taxpayers to help memorialize it. Earlier this month, the Senate stripped out a $1 million earmark for the $100 million Woodstock memorial from a Labor/Health and Human Services spending bill.
"It may be a nice thing for some people to visit to relive their memories of the good old days, but frankly, it's a handout from taxpayers," said Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl, who led a clever campaign to nix the Woodstock funding. Kyl proposed the money be shifted to a block grant for children and pregnant women.
The sponsors, including New York Democratic Sens. Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton, may have been filled with Woodstock whimsy but not that much. Both had received substantial campaign contributions from the Woodstock memorial's coordinator . . . after the earmark had been inserted. That made denying additional funding for the health of women and kids, even in behalf of the greatest event in the history of stoners, an even bigger publicity bummer.
For the record, both of Arizona's GOP senators missed attending Woodstock.
As Sen. John McCain, a former prisoner of war, told an audience at a presidential debate, "I was tied up at the time."