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.)
http://www.wfu.edu/~llewelly/ - here's this Mama's boy website.
Thanks for the ping.
I think a lot this anger might be relieved if we hang John Kerry in effigy. There must be a town named Effigy around here somewhere. Or we could rename one for the event.
Ah, yes. Bring back the old days.....
This guy is a major league ahole.
These stories make me sick. I am 29 so I only hear these stories second hand from places like this. I am sitting here crying because I can't believe how horribly our men were treated by thier fellow Americans. My dad was a Marine and doesn't talk about it much. Only once did he say that he walked through O'Hare Airport in Chicago in his uniform and was called "baby-killer" and "all that stuff" (his words).
I am so thankful that Kerry was not elected so that these incidents are not repeated. People who did spit and yelled and assulted our men are nothing but cowards and I can't see how they can get up everyday and look themselves in the mirror.
http://www.wfu.edu/academics/communication/Faculty/IndividualFac/llewllyn.html
Here's a pic of this tub of sh*t -
This just proves that I did the right thing when I cancelled my subscription to the rag News & Observer a couple of months ago. People should respond to the N&O and point them to the real truth.
I'm convinced: he is a FnKerry LAPDOG.
Amen....
"Not to mention an abject liar."
Somebody ought to print out this thread and mail it to him. Or maybe 500 somebodies.
My cousin Butch was spit on.
A documentary was made detailing the project from start to finish. It includes public testimony in which the leading veteran in opposition says he was spit on.
I traveled in uniform on leave. Never experienced the hate and vitriol described in this thread. I long suspected that the spitting was isolated cases if they occurred at all. I grew up watching the war on TV and the media was no different then than it is today. They sensationalize the news.
I suspect some "false memory syndrome" at play judging from the responses of this thread.
Semper Fi!
False Memories??
I have serious doubts about that.
Parris Island, Camp Lejeune, Fort Gordon (MP School), MCB Norfolk, NAS Millington, NAS Oceana, MCAS Cherry Point, NAS Fallon, Quantico (Staff NCO Academy), San Diego (Recruiter School), Laffayette Indiana (Recruiter).
Never experienced any of this crap outside a bar I shouldn't have been in anyway.
I was even treated with the respect a military man deserves on many occasions.
I can't see how I could have been so far out of the loop.
Give this a look when you get a chance.
Good for you! GRRRR!
Letters like the tripe this "educator" came up with is disgraceful.
By the way, thank you so much for your service to this country.
Forgot to ping you. This is outrageous.
I transited through Ft. Dix NJ.
Californicate is another place I avoid.
I spent my tour in West Germany so all my experiences occurred on the East coast and then again on the college campus when I attended school under the GI bill.
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