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.)
While I was never spit at, I and the guys I worked with were made to feel unwelcome in certain circles. I liked to ask these people if they were pacifists, if they answered yes I informed them that I wasn't and Uncle Sam spent a lot of money training me to beat the crap out of people and if they didn't shut up I be more than happy to show them, if they answered no I asked them how many people they'd killed and then smiled.
I remember the riots at UCSB (Isla Vista) when they burned the Bank of America. My husband was a security policeman in Vietnam and a Policeman for the city when he returned. After the campus riots there were Union riots at BFI. My husband was hurt when he was one of 5 guys told to go in to quiet the crowd! LOL! 5 against hundreds proved to be real dumb. It was a bad time in our history and being spit on while in uniform (any uniform) wasn't surprising.
My husband still has a very old, dirty, tattered flag that he took from some hippies who were dishonoring it. I am not at all proud of a whole lot of our generation.
Twelve first hand accounts in posts
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I put in bold the posts that are exemplary in their details.
Apparently the professor's "Urban Myth" is indeed itself a Urban Myth.
Very similar to an article posted on slate in 2000.
http://slate.msn.com/id/1005224/
Not surprising this academic is pushing this pablum. It matches his political views.
I wonder why so many in our generation were/are so stupid.
I usually see a couple of servicemen in their camo's every time I go into the grocery store. Most of these incidents seem to be when the vets are on their way home.
So what's your point?
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273 was an expanded version of mine, more detail.
I cant believe it, I am just so angry, I just cannot stand this.
I better go to bed...if I can sleep.
Hey, Jojo. My computer had indigestion and I was using my older one. I thought my harddrive had died but it turned out to be a software glitch of some sort. Its the pits going from cable to landline! :)
Yes, I remember the guy from the Toby Keith concert. My stomach literally turns when I think of the ignorance (violence) so many display in the name of "peace".
Yes. That person will call every one of us liars.
Thanks! :)
And there was no Holocaust, either.
I'm a Vietnam *era* vet, but not a Vietnam vet.
To all you guys who went, profound respect and gratitude.
I never got spat on, but I did have a professor torpedo me on a letter of recommendation. I asked him if he would write it, and he said sure, then wrote that I seemed to be in a "post-Vietnam malaise."
How do I know that? Well, I was working in the admissions office. If you want to call me unethical for looking at my own file, I'll take that hit.
Rubbish. I am not a veteran, but I lived through those times, and I remember the disgraceful behavior of the radical war protesters. Yes, they spit and threw things. I can't explain why the author could not find news stories about it. But the stories didn't start 15 years after the war ended, as he says. I remember hearing about it at the time it happened. Was this guy even alive during the war?
The worst thing we can do is to forget the wrongs that were done to our military people. If we forget, then we are liable to let it happen again. Being opposed to the war was one thing, but abusing those who went to war is another. We must not let these Leftists rewrite history. (I assume this guy is a Leftist. If not, then he is playing into their hands.)
They are crazy with hatred and denial RaceBannon. God bless you and thank you for your courage, patriotism, and protection of our country.
You are welcome! :0)
You are welcome. My Vietnam Vet brother died last year. In a way, I am glad that he doesn't have to see this stuff. :(
Thank you, but there are men on this site that deserve more accolades for courage, I was never shot at. I did a few things that took a little guts, I did move faster or first compared to the Marines around me, but I was never alone, and got more recognition for the puny lifesaving things we got recognized for than we deserved, and none for the ones we did deserve! :)
Did that come out right?
I just cannot believe, still, 6 or 7 hous later, that people actually will print such a lie like this, something so demonstrably false, with thousands of witnesses still alive, and some people will repeat this pencil pushing geek's lies as the truth!
I just dont know what to say.
I am so upset, the latest Ann Coulter column had absolutely no effect on me...and that shook me!
Funny, that might sound funny, but it is a truth!
Big hug to you, Race. I just wish there was something more we could do. I am thinking that the most important thing we can do is keep writing and never let the truth die!!!!!
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