Interesting article in the Wall Street Journal by Ted Nugent on Tuesday:
The Summer of Drugs
By TED NUGENT
July 3, 2007; Page A17
This summer marks the 40th anniversary of the so-called Summer of Love. Honest and intelligent people will remember it for what it really was: the Summer of Drugs.
Forty years ago hordes of stoned, dirty, stinky hippies converged on San Francisco to “turn on, tune in, and drop out,” which was the calling card of LSD proponent Timothy Leary. Turned off by the work ethic and productive American Dream values of their parents, hippies instead opted for a cowardly, irresponsible lifestyle of random sex, life-destroying drugs and mostly soulless rock music that flourished in San Francisco.
The Summer of Drugs climaxed with the Monterey Pop Festival which included some truly virtuoso musical talents such as Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, both of whom would be dead a couple of years later due to drug abuse. Other musical geniuses such as Jim Morrison and Mama Cass would also be dead due to drugs within a few short years. The bodies of chemical-infested, braindead liberal deniers continue to stack up like cordwood.
As a diehard musician, I terribly miss these very talented people who squandered God’s gifts in favor of poison and the joke of hipness. I often wonder what musical peaks they could have climbed had they not gagged to death on their own vomit. Their choice of dope over quality of life, musical talent and meaningful relationships with loved ones can only be categorized as despicably selfish.
I literally had to step over stoned, drooling fans, band mates, concert promoters and staff to pursue my musical American Dream throughout the 1960s and 1970s. I flushed more dope and cocaine down backstage toilets than I care to remember. In utter frustration I was even forced to punch my way through violent dopers on occasion. So much for peace and love. The DEA should make me an honorary officer.
I was forced to fire band members and business associates due to mindless, dangerous, illegal drug use. Clean and sober for 59 years, I am still rocking my brains out and approaching my 6,000th concert. Clean and sober is the real party…..
Ted Nugent is an almost talentless, smug, self-aggrandizing, rightwing, gun-loving, animal-killing dolt. Whatever is valuable in his absolutist, tired diatribe against drugs and hippies and summer of ’67 (and there’s plenty to criticize there) is buried in his (by now signature) ferocious self-absorption and arrogance, and exhibits the kind of myopic worldview that in part got W elected for two terms. Of course the Journal ran it, probably commissioned it, and I bet it gets him an invitation to the White House.
That Jimmi Hendrix and Janis Joplin died from a culture that encouraged drug overdose is nothing to sneeze at no matter how right or left you lean.