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.)
I was 13 yrs old when my dad came home from viet nam the last time. His plane landed in Springfield Mo. and we drove there to get him. As my dad was walking into the terminal with me (I ran out to meet him) some punk teenager ran up and spit on his dress greens, my dad grabbed me to keep me from pounding him, dad told me that someone with as small a mind as his wasn't worth the effort to whip his a$$. I still get angry when I think of it.
Five years later while in the bus terminal in Little Rock Ark. another teen flipped me off and called me a baby killer, I too was in dress greens headed home on leave.
The left in this country is anti military
http://www.indepundit.com/cgi-bin/mt3/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=139
For those who don't believe these spitting incidents occurred, may I direct you to pp. 324-325 of "The Long Gray Line: The American Journey Of West Point's Class Of 1966" by Rick Atkinson (this book won the Pulitzer) where returning Vietnam veteran Tom Carhart is spat upon by a group of hippie girls while connecting through O'Hare airport.
I was an Air Force Academy cadet in 1973. I can tell you from direct experience that it was not unusual for long-haired hippie types to approach you in public places and insult you. I clearly remember a hippie asking me how many babies I killed while walking through a bus terminal in LA. Another hippie just saw me walking along the road in Colorado Springs and started shouting curses at me from his car and flipping the bird. A lot of girls would not date anyone with short hair. That was a normal state of affairs. What was so startling to me as an 18 year old kid was the intense feral hatred these hippies had for me if I went out in uniform. They would be in a wild-eyed rage.
Nobody ever spat on me nor anyone I knew. However, I never went in public in uniform alone. All of the spitting incidents I've read about seemed to be opportunistic, where a bunch of hippie creeps spot a military member alone. It's always a cowardly ambush.
For those who don't remember, this extreme attitude extended to anyone in any uniform of any kind. Hippies called anyone in uniform "pigs." Of course, the military and police were pigs in their insane view, but also security guards in stores and Boy Scouts. The abuse was fairly indiscriminate.
Military people were advised not to wear uniforms in public to avoid harassment. It wasn't until the 1980s, when Reagan was elected, that we stopped listening to the warnings and started wearing our uniforms off-base. I guess we kinda thought of it as showing the flag. It all began to turn around under Reagan.
I have since read in bemusement from liberals that these assaults and insults never happenned. They're trying to rewrite history, to erase their shameful behavior from the books. That's why I think it's important to press charges against these punks, not only to punish them but also to document their violence. And if you punch a spitter out, I'm OK with that, too.
Tantor
Posted by Tantor at October 23, 2004 09:51 AM
I do picture you do words and well. Great page!
Where did this idiot obtain his data? Who is this idiot?
Let me assure you that I can spot and and read a wannabe's line of BS from afar.
The field of academics in history has been the field of those of those who cannot make living in the real world for far too many years.
What company will hire a history major, much less even a PHD? Only on a campus, could such a fool BS his way past a hamburger flipping job.
Let this idiot email me, and; I will provide the proof to let him see the real forrest where he, hopefully, will have a reality check. There is no threat here. I never want to hurt anyone again after war.
is this person aware that more recently, hitlery's coven spat upon firefighters/LE at some event when she was running for senate?
yes it still continues. I went home on RR from iraq and I had no problems. I talked with some other soldiers on the way back he said he had a problem on a flight from hawaii, I guess someone offered him a first class seat , some bint says " why does HE get a first class seat!" and one instance in cali where a soldier was kissing his wife goodbye , another bint says" BYE HONEY , I AM GOING TO KILL BABIES!"
Many freepers are falling for this immigration stuff and attacking anyone who dare suggest it might not be as reported.
That is a blatant lie. Witness the anti war protesters out there now. They detest the military! The MSM reports them in the worse light possible, and it is not true that the Viet Nam Vets weren't treated badly. I saw it in person. What bunk.
How about the guys who couldn't get a job for years, because they were considered drug-addicted, psychotic losers? I know at least two of them...
We Support the Troops
When They Shoot Their Officers
Does trying to run them over on the highway while hitch-hiking in uniform count?
Living here in Colorado (Denver not CO Springs) I have seen exactly ONE serviceman in public in uniform since 9/11. If I have seen others I can't recall them right now.
God bless you, brother. You should have done more than arrange for some need for dental work. Thankfully, when I came back from the first Gulf War, I naver encountered this kind of behavior; as mentally unstable as I was back then, I would probably be on Death Row if it had :.)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.