For every negative story there's a positive story. From the first time I met Kenny at the age of 10, he has been nothing but nice and respectful to myself and in recent years my kids.
I suppose I see it differently. My thinking is that it's easy to be nice when everything's going your way, but the truly nice people are pleasant when it would be easy to be a jerk. I too have seen fans be as dumb as a bag of hammers. One particular time, I was in the CSK funny car VIP area and a crew member had to quickly weld some bracing that broke on the body. So he hurriedly pushed it closer to the welder, strung out the leads and crawled under the body. He was no sooner under the car when some dillweed crawled under there with the guy to see what he was doing! But in my case, KB VOLUNTARILY walked out to the ropes, dressed in street clothes, on Saturday, after all the qualifying was done and was still a buttwipe. IMHO, that's what happens when you race as a BUSINESS and not for the love of the sport, regardless of the sport.I've been around countless athletes/drivers/etc. in my life. Owned a company that did very high end auto customization, the pro athlete was our best customer.
They all have one thing in common -- they are all incredibly competitive people. But they don't all have the ability to turn that stuff on and off. Some of them can be friendly, warm and welcoming one minute and the next minute they're ready to compete at a world-class level. Others, it takes hours build it up and hours to come back down. And still others don't know any other way -- would race you to that soda machine over there.
Not sure where Kenny falls, but my personal experience with him is to steer clear of him at a race track. When he's wired, he's not a nice guy. But that's just my experience.