IT SHOULD'VE BEEN CALLED PORNSTOCK

Back in the antique days of the original Woodstock, I don't
remember thousands of people who looted and ransacked Max Yasgur's farm.
Yes, there was nudity and drinking and marijuana smoking, all of which was
shocking at the time, but there was no violence.

In fact, I seem to remember that the crowd was kind of coached through the
weekend. When a storm broke, the promoters took to the microphones and told
people to take cover. When a baby was born, the promoters took to the
microphones and announced a new arrival. When some moron got high on drugs
and thought he could fly, the promoters talked him down.

It was all rather ridiculous, looking back on it, the presumption that some
kind of new nation had been established, but at least it was peaceful. And
what sexual activity there was seemed almost demure compared with what took
place last weekend in New York as Woodstock was re-created for the second
time since the original.

Now, I didn't attend the original Woodstock, but I attended an event that
preceded it, the Atlanta International Pop Festival. Many of the same acts
that appeared at Woodstock appeared in Atlanta. And many of the prices that
people paid at the original Woodstock were paid in Atlanta.

What seems to have changed the most in the 30 years since the original
Woodstock is promiscuity. In the most recent event, men and women were
walking around without clothes. Many women posed for photographers. There
was a picture of a woman in USA Today who was not only posing, but preening.
There were a dozen photographers gathered around her.

In other accounts, I read of men and woman who were advertising their
availability to each other. It sounded like a horse auction.

I guess it boils down to one obvious conclusion. I am a prude. Most people
would say they are not prudes. Not me. I am willing to admit it. I am a
prude. I didn't think I was, but there is no escaping the truth. A big farm
field full of nude 22-year-olds does not speak well of the current state of
something, parenting, education, politics. Something is haywire.

And, as long as I am admitting things, I might as well admit that I am
embarrassed. These are the children of the so-called baby boomers. Their
parents, for the sake of the argument, attended the original Woodstock, and
then, for the sake of the same argument, passed down to their children such
a loose set of regulations and morals that, today, anything goes.

But now we know what happens when anything goes. At the end of the festival
Sunday night, the violence began. The promoters are calling it the work of
just a few, but police reports say thousands of people set fires, overturned
cars, robbed vendors, destroyed sound equipment and generally turned the
place into a violent parody of the event 30 years ago.

If the original Woodstock seems ridiculous in retrospect, this event of the
past weekend seems pathetic. Girls shouldn't walk around without their
shirts on, and men shouldn't walk around without their trousers. It suggests
an indecency that leads to incivility, which was exactly what happened. I
guess if you don't get lucky, you take it out on the nearest tractor-trailer
by overturning it and setting it on fire.

There is an answer. Today's young people need their own Woodstock. They need
to remember that the original Woodstock earned a place in history because it
was shocking to the parents of the time.

Somebody should organize a modern Woodstock where the rules to get in
include a haircut, clean clothing and no distribution of free condoms.

Kids today cannot re-create the original. And they certainly have failed to
improve on the original. It is time for them to try something different,
keeping in mind there is a difference between shocking your parents and
revolting them.

Columnist Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com or
(651) 228-5474. He can be heard each weekday 2-5 p.m. on AM 1500 KSTP.