Could Glenn Beck have been at Woodstock?

By Carl Keith Greene



Forty years ago I missed Woodstock. I was preparing to head off to Morehead State University.
Yes, I was there to get an education, and also to maintain my student deferment from the dreaded draft.
I still missed Woodstock. I don't think I would have gone even if I just lived down the road.
And I'm not even sure I was really aware that something of that magnitude was happening on the slopes of the Catskills. Seems that I learned about it after it was already over.
I remember some of the music. But I couldn't have identified the groups that played there and can only remember a few right now.
I think my musical mind was filled more with Beach Boys than Rolling Stones.
I got one of the very high draft lottery numbers, so I didn't worry too much about being shipped across the Pacific to die in some bog or marsh.
Since then things in this world have changed so much that if I hadn't lived through the '70s I couldn't have believed it.
Now that's not to say things have changed for the better or for the worse. Things have simply changed.
We've gone through Vietnam, Watergate, Chappaquiddick, attempts at the lives of Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and now, the worst of the worst, Glenn Beck.
I suspect that our old buddy Glenn has made some suspiciously stupid moves in his life, as have we all. But on the one-to-ten stupid scale, I'd say good old Glenn has hit maybe 17 or 18.
And that frightens the bejebbers out of me.
First Glenn says our President is a bad president and in the next breath says he didn't say it.
I highly suspect that Glenn doesn't hear himself so he doesn't know what he is saying.
Recently most of his sponsors, on the network th
at I won't honor by using its name, dropped off Glenn's show. That should tell old man Beck something.
But I wonder if Beck isn't a shill, trying at the behest of persons smarter than he, to prompt another John Hinckley, who tried to kill Ronald Reagan or before that Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme and Sara Jane Moore, who tried to kill Gerald Ford.
Last week the Southern Poverty Law Center issued a major warning.
The long-time civil rights organization said the recession, hatred of President Obama and anger at Democratic Party control of the federal government have produced a rise in armed militia groups.
Those groups, it says, are often racist and potentially liable to resort to what it calls domestic terrorism.
Mark Potok, Law Center spokesman, said last week the groups are not at the point of violent anti-minority, anti-government attacks, "but we seem to be getting there."
Potok said the center has identified at least 50 new militia groups in the past two years, mostly in the Midwest, Pacific Northwest and Deep South.
And CBS News recently did a report on the groups that concluded with the line "... the right-wing extremists, historically motivated by a distrust of government, are now especially angry about the election of America's first African American president."
Eleven of those groups are identified as being in Kentucky. Four of the groups, Brotherhood of Klans Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Supreme White Alliance, The Knights Order of Klans and the United Northern and Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klans are simply listed as being in Kentucky.
A neo-Nazi group, called American National Socialist Workers Party is listed as being in Baxter and in Louisville.
Fellowship of God's Covenant People is in Burlington.
Imperial Klans of America is located at Dawson Springs.
A neo-Confederate group, League of the South, is in Lexington.
Appalachian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is in Pikeville and North American White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is located in Tollesboro.
Though I know security has to be at it's highest, every time I see President Obama at a town meeting, throwing out the first pitch at a baseball game or simply being exposed to the public, I fear the worst.
My memories go back to Nov. 22, 1963, and April and June 1968 and chills go up my spine.
In fact, I try to not watch the event, especially if it's live.
In the nearly 50 years since Brown v. Board of Education was adjudicated, we've come a heck of a long way in our racial history.
But the Glenn Becks in the nation still have a long, tortuous way to go. And I fear there are more Glenn Becks out there than we can ever count.