He could not wear his uniform while home on leave and he could not talk about being a soldier. Yes, it was very bad for our military.
And the likes of FnKerry and Hanoi Jane Fonda are responsible for this mess that we have had for years and years.
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.)
My brother (Navy) and one other young man were hit by a milkshake thrown by one of those '60s commie rats. Unfortunately, many of those same rats have bathed, run for public office and been elected. They need to go!
I will be there.
From a story published today:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2004-11-10-vets-edit_x.htm
But that wasn't to be. During a 20-year career as an infantry officer, I came back from Vietnam twice. The first time, I detected coolness. A few years later, I returned from Vietnam again, and the reception was hostile. Hurrying to catch a plane to be rejoined with loved ones, a hippie-looking youth stepped in my path and spat right in my face and on my uniform.
Cold Heat:
Thank you for your service to our country and the same to all Viet Nam vets. WE know who the real heroes were and are - our military.
You said when you left the East Coast - you were not treated with such disrepect. I am glad to hear that. Whereabouts did you travel to? Was it, as the liberals say so disparagingly, "Flyover country"? Were you then greeted with the courtesy you deserved (I hope so).
I think we "rubes" in Flyover country knew and still know how to honor our military. I got in a screaming fight with a stepdaughter who was brain-washed by her professors (pardon the expression) about Vietnam and John Kerry. I set her straight, but am not sure she believed me.
I guess the only consolation to this continued onslaught of insults to our Viet Nam vets is that millions of us DO honor you and that fire of respect for you will burn brightly for years to come.
God Bless You.
Here's the deal on "expert witness." It's by no means the accolade this man seems to think it is . . .
One party to a lawsuit puts a witness on the stand and goes through a short litany of his education, qualifications, etc. Then the lawyer says, "I tender Dr. X as an expert in the field of whatever." The judge asks the other lawyer, "Do you wish to voir dire?" If the other lawyer says he wants to, he can quickly cross-examine the witness about his qualifications.
Here's the kicker: most lawyers do NOT want to highlight the other side's expert's qualifications. If they think he isn't going to be a particularly convincing witness, they don't bother. Even if he is, they sure as heck don't want to give him a chance to toot his own horn. If they have a real killer cross-exam, like say a conviction for a crime involving moral turpitude, they WILL voir dire and blow the guy out of the water, then object to his qualifications and ask that he NOT be accepted by the trial court as an expert.
But in 99 and 94/100ths of the cases, the other lawyer says, "No, your honor, no questions," and the expert is simply accepted by the court without any objection.
So what this fellow's bragging amounts to is that he was probably tendered by some jackleg lawyer as an expert, and the other side didn't think it worth the time to bother to object.
Some high class qualification, that.
BTW, when I was flying back from Hawaii in the summer of 1971 and changed planes in LA, I sat next to a very young soldier in uniform on the way back to Atlanta. I was 16, and he couldn't have been much older, a baby-faced, soft-spoken young man. He told me he had been spit on in the airport. He did have a couple of dirty damp spots on his uniform, and I asked the stew for a glass of water and a napkin and tidied him up. He was very upset. I spent the trip comforting him, and assuring him that those of us who had daddies who fought in WWII and granddaddies who fought in WWI were 100 percent behind him and supported him.
I suppose that the whole thing could have been a setup to flirt with me, but even then I had a pretty well developed BS detector and he seemed genuinely upset, I doubt he was that good an actor.
Thanks to John Kerry and his ilk.
bump! bump! bump!
Now we know who was conducting those early exit polls for Kerry.
Oh of course it's an urban legend - those peace-loving anti-war activists never do ANYTHING so dreadful as this.
</ sarcasm >
*************
With these words, this man disqualifies himself from researching this issue. He is too emotionally invested in the subject.
Not to mention, and abject liar.
Of course every single one of us didn't get spit on. I didn't. But I know those that did. This is pure B.S. Vietnam vets were treated like crap.
He could not wear his uniform while home on leave and he could not talk about being a soldier. Yes, it was very bad for our military.
And the likes of FnKerry and Hanoi Jane Fonda are responsible for this mess that we have had for years and years.
Apparently this "scholar" did not collect any of his data at the San Francisco Airport.
Vets of all wars - Thanks and welcome home!
Vets of all wars - Thanks and welcome home!
Just another re-write of history from the Left.
I processed in from Vietnam at Oakland, California Army Terminal in June 1968. We had to have the Oakland Police escorting our bus, and we were told to keep our heads down and away from the windows. We were informed that the peace-loving Berkeley students were not happy with us.
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