Peace, love, politics at Woodstock
Project's funding raises sour note
BETHEL, N.Y. - The emerald hill at Yasgur's Farm is quiet now, the electrified sounds of Jimi Hendrix and other performers from the Woodstock concert of 1969 long since faded. But at the hillcrest rises an extraordinary sight: a $100 million Tanglewood-style concert pavilion and an adjoining museum that soon will tell the story of the 1960s with exhibits such as "The Hippies" and "Three Days of Peace and Music."
The museum, intended to heal generational divisions, has instead brought a political war back to the farm. The project's backers asked New York's two US senators, including Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, for $1 million in federal funds for the museum. They portrayed it as a modest economic salve for a depressed region.
But the Senate killed the funding proposal earlier this month, and Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican seeking the presidency, made it into a laugh line at a debate last week, mocking Clinton for trying to memorialize a "cultural and pharmaceutical event."
McCain brought the debate audience to its feet when he added, "I was tied up at the time," referring to being a prisoner of war in Vietnam while hippies danced in Max Yasgur's muddy fields.
He turned the attack into a commercial airing in the first-primary state of New Hampshire, complete with images of swaying concertgoers.
"No one can be president of the United States that supports projects such as these," McCain said in the debate. In one sweep, McCain performed a triple hit on Clinton, suggesting that she supports wasteful spending by earmarking funds for special projects, that Clinton is connected to Woodstock-style values while he was a POW, and that she is unqualified to be president.
The museum's mission is to put into perspective the events of the 1960s, including the Vietnam War and the assassination of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, which were followed by counterculture rebellions and a burst of folk and rock creativity that culminated in the Woodstock festival.
At the Woodstock concert site, where the autumnal glory of the Catskills had just reached its peak late last week, there were amazement and understanding about how a long-sought infusion of federal funds for an economically distressed region turned into an issue in the presidential campaign.
"I've been telling people for years that we need either a shot in the arm or a shot in the head to put us out of our misery," said Town Supervisor Harold Russell, a Republican and a farmer. "Well, this is the shot in the arm we needed. It's been a revitalization of the town and county."
If McCain had visited the town before attacking Clinton, Russell said, he would have understood how much the project meant to the region.
But even some local townspeople who might benefit from the project were skeptical about federal funding. Rickie Craft, manager of the Woodstock Emporium, a country store 1 mile from the festival site that sells concert memorabilia, said she objected to $1 million in federal dollars going to a project that has plenty of private backing. "You could give that money to homeless people," she said.
After word spread about the funding provision, Republicans earlier this month joined with five Democrats - including Vietnam veteran Senator James Webb of Virginia - to kill the funding. But the Senate left intact every other earmark in the bill, more than 1,000 items worth $563 million, according to the nonpartisan watchdog group, Taxpayers for Common Sense.
"This is an example of how the system is out of control," said Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense. The Woodstock earmark was no more or less deserving than other grants, he said. The bigger issue is that Congress allows powerful members to get money for pet projects, he said, usually without a vote.
"If you are going to play the game, you put yourself at risk for this criticism," Ellis said. "They are more than willing to take credit for the various projects, but all of a sudden when somebody comes calling on it, it becomes an orphan."
The Woodstock project is the brainchild of a most unlikely patron: a locally born billionaire named Alan Gerry, a former Marine and a Republican who made his fortune in the cable television business.
He lived in the area during the festival but would not allow his daughters to attend. But one daughter sneaked out and went anyway, and another later helped convince her father that the site should be preserved.
Gerry decided to construct a 16,800-person concert venue, with 4,800 covered seats. The pavilion, known as the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, opened in 2006 for all kinds of music.
Indeed, Gerry brings to mind the famous Hendrix lyric about a "white-collar conservative. . . . Mr. Businessman." Gerry's associates smile knowingly at the comparison but say it took a by-the-numbers businessman to see the potential of the site.
So Gerry's nonprofit family foundation kicked in nearly $85 million for the facility, which also received $16.5 million in funds from New York taxpayers during the administration of Governor George Pataki, a Republican who backed the project. The $1 million in federal funds was almost an afterthought.
Yet, the funding was sought around the same time that Gerry and his family contributed $9,200 to Clinton's presidential campaign, and $20,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, led by New York's other senator, Charles E. Schumer. Gerry, who declined to interviewed, said earlier this month in a television interview that the timing of the contributions was a coincidence.
He has also defended the museum as commemorating an important cultural event.
"It is not a hippie museum," said Gerry's chief of staff, Darrell Supak, who spoke for the businessman. Supak said the foundation envisions baby boomer parents arriving in minivans to teach their children about Woodstock. It is, he said, designed for family-friendly entertainment, scoffing at McCain's drug-infused description.
Michael Egan, the chief executive of the museum, saw a larger irony at work, saying one of the themes of the museum has been unintentionally illustrated by the McCain-Clinton feud. One exhibit "talks about how we split politically as a nation at that point in the '60s, and it has never been healed. That is really the beginning of the red state-blue state bifurcation of the country," Egan said.
Clinton has not responded publicly to the attacks by McCain. Her aides referred questions to Schumer, who attended a Bob Dylan concert here this summer. Schumer has sung the project's praises on the Senate floor, arguing that it would provide needed jobs. "I'm proud of this earmark," he said. "It's the right type of earmark."
When the earmark received initial approval in June, Clinton and Schumer put out a joint release that said the two senators "worked closely" to get the funding. The June 22 statement did not mention the word "Woodstock," saying instead that the funds would help pay for exhibits about "the period of the 1960s and its continuing legacy."
McCain and his press secretary did not respond to a request for comment. In describing the earmark during last week's debate, McCain said the money was going to what he called the "Woodstock Concert Museum."
In fact, the money was intended for what will be called the Museum at Bethel Woods, scheduled to open next summer. The self-described hippies and flower children who run an unaffiliated facility 70 miles from here called the Woodstock Museum were not amused at McCain's statement.
"We really were the hippies living it," said Shelli Lipton, chief executive of the Woodstock Museum. She attended the concert and scoffed at the notion that Clinton, who voted for the Iraq war but now is critical of it, has Woodstock values. "I've never heard her say, 'The hippies were right,' " Lipton said.
For many of those connected to the original event, the spat over the $1 million in federal money and the opulence of the facility pale beside the joy of being able to enjoy the return of acts such as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
"It's a little bit corporate for me, but it is great to see music in the valley," said Michael Lang, a producer of the original festival. As it happens, Lang attended a fund-raiser for Clinton on Thursday in New York City and they discussed McCain's attack on her. "She said, 'Life's too short to be worrying about comments like that,' " Lang said.
Some original concertgoers never left. Duke Devlin, whose barrel chest and flowing beard give him a resemblance to the 1960s comic strip character Mr. Natural, attended the festival and works for the center as a historical interpreter. Asked what Hendrix would have thought of Woodstock's makeover by an incarnation of Mr. Businessman, Devlin said the place was - and should still be - all about the music.
"He would have said, 'When do I go on?' " Devlin said of Hendrix. 