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.)
Before I'd left for overseas, waiting in an airport bar, someone I'd never met bought me a beer and wished me well. When I returned after 2 yrs & 4 mos, I found a few were nice, most were indifferent or not very nice and some were F***ing vicious nuts.
LLewellyn, the writer of the article above, hasn't a clue.
Chieftain, kellynla, and 68 grunt:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS
Even if true, it's three precent too many.
I did see a demonstration on Boston Common but they were weirdo hippies against the war itself.
This is a total load of crap, don't you think?
Thanks for your kind words, and the work you do.
Your welcome and I am not complaining about the fit.....
OoohRah and Semper Fi
'Twerent a myth my friend. It actually happened.
Not a Vietnam Vet, but I did get spit on and labelled a killer of babies, amongst other things, while wearing the uniform in the early-mid seventies. No myth, all fact. Every Vietnam Vet I've ever served with has a story similar or worse. This was a universally accepted practice by the general population of youth and young "adults" at the time. Another sorry attempt to revise history to meet a leftist agenda.
"Certified as an expert on the subject in the federal
courts"
___What stupid organization certifies stuff like
that?
--- My thought exactly. This is the kind of guy
who always includes the "PhD" after his name,
as if to say "None dare refute me!" ( As if there aren't tens of millions of PhDs foisting their expertise
everywhere)
I noticed you'd been absent. Good to see you back.
As far as the "myth" crap, what of the guy who was attacked at the Toby Keith concert about a month ago?
Hummm.....were you there that night that..........uh, well, maybe it's better to let sleeping dogs lie.
Not that you were one of the dogs, mind you!
My buddies had all of them occupied!
I'm glad it was dark.........and we were over-indulged in alcohol.
He said when his tour of duty was over, he and others were flown to California. When he got off the plane, there was no fanfare, etc. There was one guy waiting there to greet them - Jimmy Stewart. He came out to meet them by himself, on his own.
He said it was probably his fondest memory of that time.
Republican offices were shot at? Really? I didn't see that story on CBS. 20 years from now it will be as widely known as it is now.
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