Posted on 11/10/2004 3:35:05 PM PST by mykdsmom
WINSTON-SALEM -- Last week voters went to the polls to select a vision for the future. Now Americans must find a way forward together. This week, as we honor service and sacrifice on Veterans Day, an image from this political season must be put to rest.
The presidential campaign featured the resurgence of a myth from the early 1990s. That myth is that soldiers returning from Vietnam were spit upon by citizens or war protesters. That claim has been used to turn honest differences of opinion about the war into toxic indictments.
As a scholar of urban legends I am usually involved with accounts of vanishing hitchhikers and involuntary kidney donors. These stories are folklore that harmlessly reveals the public imagination. However, accounts of citizens spitting on returning soldiers -- any nation's soldiers -- are not harmless stories. These tales evoke an emotional firestorm.
I have studied urban legends for nearly 20 years and have been certified as an expert on the subject in the federal courts. Nonetheless, it dawned on me only recently that the spitting story was a rumor that has grown into an urban legend. I never wanted to believe the story but I was afraid to investigate it for fear that it could be true.
Why could I not identify this fiction sooner? The power of the story and the passion of its advocates offer a powerful alchemy of guilt and fear -- emotions not associated with clearheadedness.
Labeling the spitting story an urban legend does not mean that something of this sort did not happen to someone somewhere. You cannot prove the negative -- that something never happened. However, most accounts of spitting emerged in the mid-1980s only after a newspaper columnist asked his readers who were Vietnam vets if they had been spit upon after the war (an odd and leading question to ask a decade after the war's end). The framing of the question seemed to beg for an affirmative answer.
• • •
In 1998 sociologist and Vietnam veteran Jerry Lembcke published "The Spitting Image: Myth, Media and the Legacy of Viet Nam." He recounts a study of 495 news stories on returning veterans published from 1965 to 1971. That study shows only a handful (32) of instances were presented as in any way antagonistic to the soldiers. There were no instances of spitting on soldiers; what spitting was reported was done by citizens expressing displeasure with protesters.
Opinion polls of the time show no animosity between soldiers and opponents of the war. Only 3 percent of returning soldiers recounted any unfriendly experiences upon their return.
So records from that era offer no support for the spitting stories. Lembcke's research does show that similar spitting rumors arose in Germany after World War I and in France after its Indochina war. One of the persistent markers of urban legends is the re-emergence of certain themes across time and space.
There is also a common-sense method for debunking this urban legend. One frequent test is the story's plausibility: how likely is it that the incident could have happened as described? Do we really believe that a "dirty hippie" would spit upon a fit and trained soldier? If such a confrontation had occurred, would that combat-hardened soldier have just ignored the insult? Would there not be pictures, arrest reports, a trial record or a coroner's report after such an event? Years of research have produced no such records.
Lembcke underscores the enduring significance of the spitting story for this Veterans Day. He observes that as a society we are what we remember. The meaning of Vietnam and any other war is not static but is created through the stories we tell one another. To reinforce the principle that policy disagreements are not personal vendettas we must put this story to rest.
Our first step forward is to recognize that we are not a society that disrespects the sacrifices of our servicemembers. We should ignore anyone who tries to tell us otherwise. Whatever our aspirations for America, those hopes must begin with a clear awareness of who we are not.
(John Llewellyn is an associate professor of communication at Wake Forest University.)
Good evening.
The latest guy to get a good dose of hate is john kerry and he is still confused. Payback is indeed a b**tch, eh.
Michael Frazier
God bless you for your service to us all in Vietnam
(AND in the airport in California!)
I have been watching this thread all night. The stories and personal accounts are heartbreaking. Is this person going to call all of these posters liars?
...it's the soldier who give the intellectual the right to lie in print...
I am still so absolutely furious.
I dont know if I ever swore on this board, but I am ready to make R.Lee Ermey blush...
The holocaust didn't happen either.
Wow
This guy is too full of sh&& to waste time on.
John Danforth
SSgt U.S. Army (ret)
Welcome home brother. I apologize for the ignorant among us.
"Only 3 percent of returning soldiers recounted any unfriendly experiences upon their return."
Well, partner, that's about 3% too damn many. BTW, 3% of of a half a million is about 15,000. That's way too damn many.
Well, my father didn't get spit on when he stepped off the plane stateside after coming back from Viet Nam. Nope. Instead, he was struck by a bag of piss that burst open upon contact.
But you're right - he wasn't spit on.
Thanks for the ping, welcome back, bump to read another page of this thread later.
My Dad was a police officer who had to keep back protesters when the veterans came home. He knows that they were spit at because he was spit on when they missed their target.
Think so shit bird
My husband was spit on while in uniform & holding our 3yr old son! I wish someone could take it back, but they can't & they have no idea what it did to my husband.
A google search reveals this guy to be making a career over debunking the Starbucks hates Israel myth, deconstructing sports speech and, oh yeah, defending the Kerry-Edwards image...
“Llewellyn said Edwards’ life story of growing up the son of mill workers, and working hard to pull himself to prosperity, had resonated with people.”
Source: http://www.wfu.edu/wfunews/newsmake.htm
Spit at (but not hit), called "imperialist," "murderer," and "babykiller." Had to punch out about twenty people over the next decade and to toss one in a garbage dumpster and one into wet cement. The Left had told so many unchallenged lies over the TV and traitors like John Kerry had slimed in public so much that no one even wanted to hear the truth, or would believe it when it was told to them.
"So you guys got the Hell beat out of you at Tet, huh?"
"No, we defeated the VC utterly; we hurt them so badly in the Tet Offensive that they will never be able to mount a significant operation again. The NVA will have to take over for them because we just flat smoked them."
"That's not what WALTER CRONKITE said on TV!!!"
"Well, then @#$% Walter Cronkite."
All the leftist kookiness started back then. We had a draft, so blaming soldiers for the war was bizarre. The left was so worried about our supposed "atrocities," but never gave a damn about the real atrocities by the communist dictators. Remember a Clinton White House staffer telling a general that "uniforms aren't welcome here"? What does that tell you about the attitude of the left toward men in unform?
Happy Birthday, bro...
the ONLY reason I wasn't spit on was that we came into Norton AFB in 1970 and were told to change into civvies before we left the base... The protesters were just outside the gates.
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