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.)
As I told jimmyC once ... don't EVER let me see this ***** in front of my sights!
I am so very sorry for your loss. That is maddening.
I suppose they followed Ted Koppel's lead and interviewed VC instead of those who served.
I know someone who returned from Viet Nam in 1970 and at a party for graduate school newcomers at the U. of Oregon was spat on by the wife of a professor.
I suppose he thinks those of us who lived through this time forgot? Or maybe he isn't aware of the news clips that showed hippies, dirty mostly, some may have been clean, throwing stuff and spitting on vets. This is a matter of record that can easily be checked out, that he didn't shows that he is lying and also a liberal trying to discredit the things swifties have said about Kerry. How do we get hold of this wonderful myth buster?
He won't be a male if I ever see him on the street - if he survives that is.
Good work.......I hate these pucky punks........
I had rocks thrown at me in 1981. They screamed for me to go home. Hell, I didn't want to be in Illinois anyway.
This author gives not two farthings for fact or truth, and his research is obviously only limited to perusing those who agree with his own worldview.
His full intent is bluster, to provoke. The author is cocking a snook, and spinning an agenda.
I read his article, and I see an old, tired, boring, cowardly man sitting on his toilet writing an article. Were he not tenured, he'd be at Park Square on a little box, screaming his rant at those busy on their way to and from work; and hoping you'd be putting some tin or bucks into his little cup.
Just because he has been accorded the title "professor" should in no way serve to empower his article, or his anti-military sentiment running like poison through this attempt at "intellectual" ponderings.
The scholar needs the warrior more than the warrior needs the scholar, at moment. Perhaps he's just feeling... BLUE.
Poohbah,
You are correct with the implications of responding to that sort of provocation. I returned from my first tour in Jan '69. Things hadn't totally gone crazy yet with Kerry's protesters. During that period, to travel on a SPACE-A basis on commercial aircraft (50% reduction) the military member MUST be in uniform. Well, I must tell you that after several encounters with my fellow Americans, which two of the incidents were referred to my 1st shirt, I travelled in disguise (civvies). Although at that time, the haircut was a dead giveaway.
Congrats - USMC gets one year older
That is so true.
((((((tet))))))))
Thank you for your service to our country.
email sent to this jerk off
Mike,
You may want to pass this along to Mr. Chamberlain.
Just as I predicted.
The election is over.
And the attacks on Viet Nam Vets start, in earnest.
AND ABC, AP, CBS, CNN, FOX, MSNBC, NBC, NY Times
and 99 Senators will say
"After all, they lied about Senator Kerry"
The President won, and rightly so.
And the Republicans picked up Senate and House seats.
And Viet Nam Vets are once again the butt of abusive treatment.
Dear Dr. Llewellyn:
Not to put a pin in your balloon sir, but either I was high on drugs I never used or insane at the time, but I for one was spit on when returning from Viet Nam. The incident happened at the San Francisco International Air Port.
I, a returning First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army, was with an Air Force Major. We were confronted by two young men and one young lady, who were blocking out path, asking us questions such as how many babies had we killed and how many women we had raped, when the young lady stepped close to me and spit in my face.
I was, initially stunned and taken aback. I had no idea how to respond. I guess my anger was welling up within me as the young folks took off as the Air Force Major grabbed me and said something to the affect "that it wasn't worth it".
It certainly is a shame that you have taken the position as an authority on the subject and written that such activities didn't happen and are nothing more than Urban Legend.. They did and to more than just a few individuals.
This was in the spring of 1972 and to this day I feel the anti-war groups such that Lt. JG John Kerry formed were the instigators of those actions.In the early to mid 70's we really did live in a country that either sat silently back and said nothing or laid the blame for our misled adventure in Viet Nam at the feet of those who served.
John Kerry accused us of War Crimes and in his statements claimed many if not most of us developed drug habits while serving an ungrateful nation.
You can opine as much as you like, but I suggest you either have a political ax to grind or don't know what you are talking about. I suggest both.
Sincerely,
Greg Adams
Pierre, South Dakota
Should I get a response I will post it to the thread.
Just another flaming liberal who has spent his life in academia and has no real knowledge of life in the real world, IMHO.
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