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.)
rising blood pressure ping
Get a load of this guy . . .
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?
"Dr." John Llewellyn is a left-wing fool. I wonder if he every thought that just maybe those dirty hippies traveled in packs, like wild dogs.
20 years from now, I suspect that it will be considered an "Urban Myth" that Republican campaign offices were shot at and had their windows broken in 2004.
I can't say that I was spit on but I saw friendlier
looks on the faces of the Vietnamese people, than I saw
in LAX. Cold, hard stares, tight lips. The best part was when a WW II veteran took me into the bar and bought me a beer, that made up for the rest.
Isn't it interesting, this guy is willing to call all this
an urban legend and justifies it by saying "you can't prove
a negative", yet there is no refutation of Kerry's lies
and slanders, negatives for which were WAS no proof.
This ... individual ... is an idiot. The question simply asked those who had been maltreated by hippies to "come forward" and "tell their stories". Last time I checked, leftists encouraged people to do that. I guess the leftist welcome mat gets rolled up when "their stories" reveal that naked truth that hippies in particular and leftists in general are evil. I'm shocked
You are full of it,a$$hole. STFU!
Many of my Vietnam vet friends were spat upon and things even worse than that.
(Myself, I wasn't in Vietnam. I was a tad too old. However, My veteran friends are not liars)
You, Mr Llewellyn, Go To Hell and Burn!
I hope bsome of you trhat had the experience will CALL this jerk and demand he retract his statement in writing.
Ouch! My apologies for the typing!
Yeah, soldiers are out-of-control wild beasts. Of course they lack any self-control or desire not to get into fights. They are like animals. I look down on them. I would spit on them, but that's just an urban legend </sarcasm>
This is a total aberration of the truth. I saw our soldiers treated this way. I had friends return and tell me tales of their treatment. If I wasn't trying so desperately trying to remain in "Lady" mode, I'd be banned from FR for life because of my language.
I am pi$$ed!!
November 4, 1969 was my first time, in the lobby of the Fairmont Hotel. Having just returned from Vietnam, I was wearing dress blues attending a formal dinner with my new wife, my parents, and family friends. After spitting, the individual made few profane remarks about me and my medals before he was abruptly removed by two WWII vets.
"They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country."
Kerry's lies were worse than being spit on. The vets coming home could wipe away the spit. They could not wipe away the lies listed above until recently. After 30 years they have just begun to wipe away what Kerry threw on them! And in those 30 years many Vietnam Vets dies with this lie hanging around their shoulders.
Few posts really make me angry. This is one of them.
We need to have a very big, very loud and very televised THANK YOU for all the Vietnam Vets!
"I have studied urban legends for nearly 20 years and have been certified as an expert on the subject in the federal courts."
What stupid organization certifies stuff like that?????
Oh boy. I was only a baby in Vietnam but I know this is a load of ----.
Oh really? In 1968 in Chicago, I watched a Marine Corp unit parading downtown. Hundreds of people lines the streets and actually booed them. I was the only one applauding and I got lots of dirty looks from other people around me. In San Francisco, it was not a good idea to wear a uniform for fear of liberal attacks.
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