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 too young to serve in your war, but not to young to understand the price it exacted from my uncle and my friends brothers and this nation.
You have all my deepest respect.
Thanks for the ping, Race.
That sucks about your phone! Why am I not surprised that the smear campaign on our vets continues?
Thank you, Race, and thank to the rest of our veterans for your service for our country.
LOL!
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"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."
Translation: Our first step forward is to ignore all those veterans who were spit upon and treated like sh*t for serving their country. Their experiences are irrelevant to the bigger "truth."
Maybe this asswipe is an urban legend...this guy should be old enough to know the insults our guys went thru by those damn pukes! Nam vets...I wasn't old enough to go, but when I was 16, I knocked the shit out of one of those hippies in your honor with a shovel during a protest in my home town.
The column he's talking about that he claims "started the legend" was written by Bob Greene. I forget the exact date of the column, but I know that the rumors preceeded the column by years, so his claim of the column starting the myth is just historical revisionism. BTW, Democrats spit on the Boy Scouts at a convention a few years ago, also.
STUPID SOB is all I can spout at the moment
I enlisted in 1968. Got back in '71 and returned to Madison, WI. I could make a list of the crap I had to put up with. This guy is full of shit.
IMHO...sounds like, this guy is kissing sKERRY's @$$ and/or laying the groundwork to dismiss any facts of disrespect the liberals showed the vets, during and after the war.
Hey Guys ... for what it's worth
WELCOME HOME !
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If I might point out one thing that will prove this was no urban legend. The Department of Defence changed it's policy on the wearing of civilian clothes because of the way armed forces personel were being assaulted and spit upon.
Before Viet Nam, officer and enlisted types weren't allowed to wear civies and weren't supposed to wear them on leave or liberty unless directed or ordered.
After Viet Nam civilian clothes were encouraged and accepted as appropriate off duty attire.
It may not seem like much but all of a sudden barracks had to make room for civilian clothing to be stored for every service member, and it did away with the military foot locker which was replaced with closet style lockers.
When I went home from boot camp in 1975 I too was spit on, only I wasn't warned not to respond and in the absense of orders I struck back and broke the spitter nose and quickly found my seat on the bus before he found some one to complain to.
How do I do that?
No it isn't, my brother would not lie to me.
I will, Misty. Thanks.
one man's urban myth is another man's reality.
Hey doc, if you are going to rewrites history you'd better wait till all of us Vietnam Vets are dead it's easier that way. Nobody to take down your lies. You elitist POS.
It happened, and it hurt, but I got over it, and thanks to real Americans, like the FReepers and the good people, I finally got my "parade" and a "thank you". That's all we ever wanted (you can even forget the parade, the 'Thank You' was enough).
Doc all the lying, and rewriting and propaganda can't change what happened to us. You and your hero John F'n sKerry won't change it, but it sure bit you in the a$$ this time, didn't it. You people can't handle the truth so you lie and try to change it. Well, who's laughing now, and who's sorry now.
By the way doc, I was a college professor. I'll tell you this, I have a better time at the "Dew Drop Inn" than I ever had at a faculty mixer, and so did all of my fellow professors that followed me there after the faculty mixer. Rednecks are braver, more honest, and better people than you a$$holes, because they are real people that can do real things. A good friend that wanted my talent, put me on the dare a long time ago. He said, "those who can, do, those who can't, teach". The more I thought about that, the more I wanted to DO and I've been "doing" for a long time. The only thing my career as a professor is good for is a paragraph on my CV, and many laughs (you people are so disconnected from the real world, and rednecks aren't, it is their only world). I was always proud of my west Texas accent, even when I was a professor in the Yankee state of Indiana. My grammar was more correct than most of the lefty profs. And I'll always be proud to be a redneck.
I've rambled enough. If you believe the good doc, that's fine, if you believe a Vet, that's fine, but I'll be damned if the leftists will change history. I know you FReepers don't believe this horses%^t but I do worry that these lies will pass to the American people. I want the whole story told!
I grew up surrounded and protected by US Marines in Guantanamo Bay. All Americans owe you guys (and gals) our undying respect.
I have to admit some ignorance, though. I didn't realize the Corps is older than the nation. For some reason, I was under the impression the Corps was formed in the Second World War. How did the Marine Corps come about?
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