
                         THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
                 Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, June 26, 1994                    TAG: 9406240034 
SECTION: COMMENTARY                     PAGE: J4    EDITION: FINAL  
SOURCE: Medium 
DATELINE: 940626                                 LENGTH:

U.S. GOVERNMENT WAS THE ABOMINATION

{LEAD} I read with disbelief Don Feder's column on Woodstock (op-ed, June 22). For some reason he has chosen to cast Woodstock as an abomination, something to be forgotten. Well, heck, the Civil War was an abomination, brother against brother, rape, murder, perversions. Yet it was also filled with people like Lincoln, Douglass, Grant and Lee. It was the beginning of the end of slavery, a major turning point in our history.

Only a really small person would look at the Civil War and call it an abomination. I am afraid that Feder boy is suffering from this same smallness of thinking when he calls Woodstock an abomination. I was not there, as I am sure he was not either, so neither of us can say what really happened there. We can only read and listen and wonder.

{REST} I don't doubt that indiscretions were committed there, both with drugs and with sex. It is true, as he so heroically noted, that love was in the air in a big way in Woodstock. It also is true that while Woodstock was going on, young Americans were dying in Vietnam.

To Mr. Feder it is Woodstock an abomination. I really feel sorry for him. Can't he see the historic significance of Woodstock? Doesn't he know and understand that Woodstock was, and is, an icon for an entire generation of Americans? Does he want to write off millions of Americans who now are running companies, raising families and contributing to the continued success of America?

The Woodstock generation believed, it turns out, that the real abomination was the U.S. government. It was responsible for sending young Americans to die in Vietnam. To what end?

Police were beating students and the National Guard killed students at Kent State. Our country was enduring another civil war of a sort, with civil rights being fought across America. Woodstock, with all it's problems and drugged-up performers and nudity and all the other things that really distress Feder was a beacon of hope and joy during a time of crisis and chaos in this great country.

Mr. Feder completely missed the mark.

JOHN L. KOEHLER

Virginia Beach, June 22, 1994

by CNB