Can You Believe That A Grateful Dead Lyricist Was Once Cheney's Campaign Manager?

[Syrinx]

John Perry Barlow seems like a great guy. He wrote songs for the Dead, and he co-founded the Electronic Freedom Foundation. So, how did he come to be, at least according to Wikipedia, the campaign manager in 1978 for evil incarnate? Something is seriously wrong with this picture.

Born in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Barlow attended elementary school in a one room schoolhouse. He was a student at the Fountain Valley School in Colorado. There Barlow met Bob Weir, who would later join the music group the Grateful Dead. Weir and Barlow maintained contact throughout the years; a frequent visitor to Timothy Leary's facility in Millbrook, New York, Barlow introduced the musical group to Leary in 1967. In 1969, Barlow graduated with high honors in comparative religion from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut and spent two years traveling. In 1971, he began practicing animal husbandry in Cora, Wyoming, at his family's Bar Cross Land and Livestock Company. He sold that business in 1988.

He is a former chairman of the Sublette County Republican Party and served as campaign manager for Dick Cheney during his 1978 Congressional campaign. By the early 2000s, Barlow was unable to reconcile his ardent libertarianism with the prevailing neoconservative movement and "didn't feel tempted to vote for Bush"; after an arrest for possession of a small quantity of marijuana while traveling, he joined the Democratic Party and publicly committed himself to outright political activism for the first time since his spell with the Republican Party.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Perry_Barlow

[Erika]

1. He finally saw the light!

Yes!

[Kingshakabobo]

2. Hunter/Garcia songs were better anyway. n/t

[UrbScotty]

3. My aunt volunteered for one of Cheney's campaigns.

She's now a proud Democrat though.

[Mister Ed]

4. You would think that anyone who practiced animal husbandry at his parents' ranch

would want that fact kept quiet.

[fishwax]

5. There were several reasons that it makes sense

Barlow always said one of the main reasons he was a republican was because to be a democrat in wyoming was to be thoroughly marginalized. He felt he could have a bigger impact by being a leader in the republican party, thus influencing more people with his social liberalism and environmental concerns than he could as a leader of a virtually nonexistent democratic party.

As for supporting Cheney, Cheney wasn't always evil incarnate, hard as that may be to believe :) ... when he originally ran for congress Barlow found him very sympathetic to his environmental concerns. I think that was the main thing that drew Barlow to him.

I think JPB has actually been pretty consistent over the years--he's always been a strong environmentalist and always been a social liberal/libertarian. Even before he officially joined the Democratic party he was at odds with the national republican party--the DLC Dems, too, were not progressive enough for his tastes: he supported bill bradley in the 2000 primaries.

[China_cat]

6. Must have been very young in Colorado

considering that Weir was only 15 when he joined the 'Warlocks' that went on to become the Dead...in SF.