As concerts go, it was to be the Rolling Stones moment in the sun. The crowning achievement to their 1969 tour. A free concert for 250,00 (and ultimately more by estimate) as a thank you to America and the newly found ideals of peace love and togetherness of newly media-anointed Woodstock Nation.

Cynics feel the gesture of a free concert in California was a way for the always publicity and status hungry Mr. Jagger to top the golden opportunities that the Stones had previously missed. Others believe that the concert, a happening of terrible planning and inefficient organization was not the fault of the Stones but those around them who couldn’t remove their self-important, naïve heads from their bottoms.  Regardless, it is Mick and the gang who are saddled with the legacy.

As things will occasionally spin, all the great plans and sunshine that the concert was supposed to become went out the window once the event started. The acid was worse than expected and other drugs such as STP, Cocaine  and Speed were not having their expected placating effects on the crowd in general. In retrospect it was just about the first time that the ugly and dark side of drug use was put on display for the  public to the Woodstock nation.  

Sets by The Flying Burrito Brothers, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and Santana went by quickly and the crowd grew unruly. Marty Balin (of the Jefferson Airplane) was beaten as he jumped into the crowd to stop another fight in front of the stage. Many of the musicians, mighty social animals themselves who at any other concert  would have wondered around backstage sharing joints and off-the- cuff remarks about other acts while jamming on acoustic guitars, elected to bolt from the Altamont Speedway as soon as their respective sets ended.

The event finally came to it’s glorious conclusion as the Stones took the stage. Their set, whose start was delayed for a long, long time for a now long, long forgotten reason, opened with the crowd one step away from out of control.

The crowd, who were for the most  part drunken and stoned to the max, answered to nobody. At best they were held in check by themselves and an unspecified number of Hell’s Angels who, wielding bats, chains and knives, took their authority very seriously.

Not even Mick  Jagger whose cries of “get along people” (I am paraphrasing here) fell on deaf ears as the normally responsible Hell’s Angels killed a man a few feet away, could control what was going on.

Details on the murder of Meredith Hunter are, as the details of so many murders are, conflicting. Still, many agree he had a gun and was waiving it. Many agree he was killed by an unspecified number of Hell’s Angels.

Supporters of the Hell’s Angels feel they saved Jagger’s life. Others feel they were drunken cowardly bullies who think they saw a black man with a gun. Regardless of whose side you take, and there are arguments for each side, the end result was a stabbing while the Stones played Under My Thumb.

The mans’ death is sad and an unfortunate by-product of the hate venom and bad planning and drunkenness and self importance of the people who staged the concert.

Needles to say there weren’t too many apologies, (one that I know of to be precise), just a whole lot of victims who weren’t really responsible. There were also a couple of people who stood defiant, refusing to accept any responsibility for their actions with a callous disregard for the toll their actions took.

Kind of like the last few weeks in America. Over the past few days we have been inundated with acts of cowardice, drunkenness and self-importance run amuck.

As we all know, a congressman shouted down the President in an act of disrespect for the office so ugly that I cannot understand any reason for it’s occurrence. None. There is no excuse for what that man did. If you disagree with the President you go on Fox News, you don’t yell at him like this is a pick up game of basketball on a Baltimore playground.

An incredible athlete whose record is among the greatest in her sport goes ballistic on a line judge. While embarrassing for the woman, it also exposes the real heart of sports.

That is  where our natural, evolutionary-driven desire to defend what is ours and kill what ever is attacking us if necessary, has been routed. Her anger at the line judge is not that much removed  from what many feel when the bank charges $35 for a slight overdraft after years of zero errors or $5 to cash a check.

Only we don’t have a line judge to terrorize with our massive physique. We just have clerk behind a counter to terrorize with the threat of withdrawing our life savings. An amount that, for most of us, is probably laughable when compared to the what the Executives of that Bank receive in a weekly salary.

If we did what Ms. Williams did to that Line Judge to the customer service representative who just took $5 for that check we needed cashed, we would be in jail.

In another recent sporting event ,a college football player sucker punched a member of the opposing team as the teams walk past shaking hands at the end of the game. Since that occurred a couple of weeks ago we have already forgotten about that one. He was driven by school pride.

An entertainer, more famous for telling people how great he is than any of the music he has supposedly created, grabs the microphone at an Awards show from a nineteen-year old girl and rants about the greatness of another nominee.

Twenty -four hours later he was on a talk show apologizing. But at this point the accumulation of his arrogant episodes is so massive that most of us just turn our heads away sadly. Still, he will be back and as time wears on Burger King may purchase one of his raps to help sell their product to target consumers in Detroit, Cleveland and Pittsburgh.

In the South the same compnay will use a musician named Toby or a race car driver to sell their burgers. This isn't cynicism, but the evolutionary-fueled heart of advertising. You take aim at your audience. Just like Ms. Williams takes aim at the squares on a tennis court.

On a much more important note, one of our greatest resources, the two part political system has been high jacked by a minority who are so vicious, disrespectful and full of self-righteous venom and poison that actual work cannot no longer get done.

Some of this has been paid for by  an Australian media mogul so he can make even more money. Another part of the high-jacking of the Republicans was the rise of a failed sportscaster who couldn’t handle more than two semesters of college, who is a self confessed drug addict and was classified 4F for the draft. Yet through an act of arrogance and hubris so massive and unrelenting, he has pushed himself to the front of conservative thought in America.

Hate him or love him, he saw an opening and went for daylight. God bless you Rush. If I knew that selling my soul, bullying people and misstating facts without the slightest care for the effect my statements would have on others would have gotten me a massive private compound in Florida and a private jet, I would have never have done so much local theatre. I would have gone into talk radio and developed a personality.

Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly may think they are the king. But they are just jesters and spear-carriers who dream at night of what Rush’s throne can accomplish.

Lets not forget the State Governor who felt he could sell a vacated State Senate seat and than went on to court reality TV ideas.

In all cases, Kanye West, Rush Limbaugh, Rupert Murdoch, Ms. Williams (the only one in this bunch who should actually be forgiven, she was raised to be a warrior and we pay her to be. Still she should have known better), Rob Blagojevich and Representative Joe Wilson, their behavior is born out of self-absorption and narcissism that most of us can’t grasp. 

Don’t get me wrong, we all have the same qualities, just not in the amount that these folks, and many others who rise to media attention, have. Most of us hold those qualities in check. We have to. If we don’t the price we pay is steep.

These people just move onto talk shows and build websites for donations when they go crazy.

However, when we as a nation see there are no consequences for what those in the media do, and actually reward those who go past unspoken boundries, we each move a quarter inch closer to watching a man get knifed while we sing Under My Thumb. We each move a half inch closer to not caring.

Every high school had a jerk like Blagojevich or a drunken second-string quarterback like Kanye, so I can understand these idiots ascending to the front of the media. But over the past few months there are just too many of these episodes.

Do we get rid of cable?  Do we need 148 channels? Oh, I forgot, capitalism demands that we have even more.  I  love capitalism, its the best. But when  it comes to TV we have way to may channels that say nothing and create a home for these morons. (Again excepting Ms. Williams, she is a warrior).

Our national Altamont is just a shot away and absolutly no on one is trying to get the Stones off stage or stop the crowd from drinking one more beer or doing one more line.

In fact, we are encouraging it.

(This article was inspired by the Sunday UK Times article written by Rob Hughes. http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article6827520.ece. Thank you to Expecting Rain for the link. http://expectingrain.com/.)