A note on Bonnaroo

Posted: Sunday, June 17, 2007 10:00 PM by John Roderick

I’ve come down pretty hard on some aspects of Bonnaroo, but one thing is undeniable: there are 80,000 people here, in the middle of nowhere, camping and listening to music, and there’s almost no violence, hostility, or even frustration being expressed. The mentality of the crowd is overwhelmingly positive and accepting.

I fully admit that I’m approaching the festival from the perspective of someone outside this culture, so I might not always be as charitable as I could. But the friendly, supportive nature of the whole affair says something quite remarkable and positive about human nature.

These are the kids we’re taught to be afraid of: the videogamers, the rednecks and college kids and wayward teens hopped up on drugs and turned loose on the world. But they don’t want to hurt anybody. They want to dance and get high and eat pizza, helping each other when they fall in the mud and making space up front to get close to the band.

It should be obvious to anyone that the War on Drugs is a massive corruption and a blatant lie — and I say that as a sober person — but so too are our conventional attitudes toward groups of kids. In two days of swimming through this group of 80,000, I haven’t seen a single person even act snippy. That’s a credit to them all.