I'm honored to know you..
Thank you for your service to your country
God Bless all our Veterans, who fought to keep us free...
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.)
Thank you for your service in Vietnam and elsewhere.
Thank you and all others from the U.S. Navy and USAF, US Army, USCG, and Marines (Happy birthday to them!) for my freedom!
I was told to not to wear my uniform while traveling. But I did I loved it too much I got a lot of bad stares though. F them!
I am just so angry.
I sent both the professor and the newspaper a letter.
I am still vibrating and need blood pressure medication.
This is just as big a lie as holocaust denial.
I'm honored to know you..
Thank you for your service to your country
God Bless all our Veterans, who fought to keep us free...
Oh my... : (
Thanks for serving our country, and welcome to FR. what did you do in Vietnam?
Monday, September 20, 2004 - Vietnam vet's CD supports troops in Iraq
By James Hannah
The Associated Press
DAYTON - When Rick Crawford returned from the Vietnam War in 1970, anti-war protesters spit on him.
Oh my. I am so sorry to hear that, it fills me with disgust. Folks like your brother are my heroes.
Semper Fi, happy birthday, and thanks for serving.
This is just one more avenue the libs are using to explain why they lost the election.
It can't be that they're out of step with America!
It HAS to be that America is out of step with THEM!
I can't thank you enough for serving.
All I can think about is my brother. I remember when he returned from Vietnam and I will never forget the way he was treated. It's like yesterday, and I know how badly he was treated on the campus of USC as a disabled vet. As always, I miss him and I resent like hell those who belittled him because he was a vet.
Someone mentioned that I should tell mre detail just to make the story undeniable.
Here goes.
I graduated Parris Island Dec 13, 1977, took the train home, got home Dec 14 evening, went outside during the day on the 15th and walked down Turnpike Road in my home town right outside the airport.
I had on a denim jacket, sweater, jeans and sneakers, and NO HAT. I wanted to show off my High and Tight! I was A MARINE!
I heard some yelling, 3 beer bottles went flying past me, went in front of me, landing a few feet in front, I heard the yelling saying BABY KILLER...
Had some drunk in the downtown bar try to pick a fight with me, some older biker hippie type, drunk, I just walked away.
Some girl who I was friends with from a few classes ahead of me told me I was a baby killer for being a Marine. She was a friend 2 years before, too, and all of a sudden I was a baby killer.
When I got to LAX to find a way to Palm Springs, I heard the baby killer comments in the airport. In Palm Springs I heard nothing, but we got pulled over by CHIPS and accused of smoking pot in the car which was a lie, they were just trying to bust us.
In Hollywood, we were money to most people, but some old hippies yelled at us, some were friendly, the homos tried to pick us up...
In North Carolina the locals hated us, I had beer bottles thrown at me from a car there, too, at Atlantic Beach the girls wouldn't talk to us, some shouted out baby killer, others were friendly.
Hawaii, we were respected by the tourists and the locals just wanted our money.
"The police just stood there and watched."
That's a shame. My Dad was one of those police officers but he didn't let them get away with it. He used his night stick on those hippies. He hated them. He even tried to run down Kerry and Fonda. He wasn't serious just trying to scare them. He was mad because Kerry wanted a police escort and that was one of Dad's jobs. Needless to say, Kerry didn't get an escort.
He will.
193-"I'd like to spit on him in your honor!"
thankyou - permission granted, in fact encouraged.
The anamosity didn't really start until after John Kerry's testimony before the Senate.
This is a phoney study.
Howlin, I wish I could stand in front of this idiot and tell him what I know about the guys who came back and what they went through. You know the saying about ripping someone a new butt? I'm up for that right now! :)
Because I had heard of disrespecting actions to GIs in uniform, I changed directly into civvies when I hit San Francisco. I have a short temper and I did not want to be goaded into clobbering someone who showed disrespect to me.
I once rushed across a chow hall and put a fellow GI against and pretty far up on the wall after he snapped his fingers at me to move along more quickly. My fuse is tightened when I'm hungry.
I would have become quite unglued had anyone spit at/near me. I did not want to be put in the position of responding as I knew I would.
I'd be surprised if any GI would put up with being so disrespected - the same guy would not do it twice.
But John F'n Kerry certainly called me a baby killer. I would have clobbered that SOB, too.
Look at what the liberals did to the boy scouts at their 2000 convention. Any question that they would do the same to the returning "baby killers." The only reason there was not more of it is that peacenicks are a bunch chicken dungs. Talk to some of the guys that were in ROTC in the 70's and hear what they went through.
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.