I told y'all, today's boston globe has an article by Jerry lembke JERRY LEMBCKE Debunking a spitting image By Jerry Lembcke | April 30, 2005 STORIES ABOUT spat-upon Vietnam veterans are like mercury: Smash one and six more appear. It's hard to say where they come from. For a book I wrote in 1998 I looked back to the time when the spit was supposedly flying, the late 1960s and early 1970s. I found nothing. No news reports or even claims that someone was being spat on. ADVERTISEMENT What I did find is that around 1980, scores of Vietnam-generation men were saying they were greeted by spitters when they came home from Vietnam. There is an element of urban legend in the stories in that their point of origin in time and place is obscure, and, yet, they have very similar details. The story told by the man who spat on Jane Fonda at a book signing in Kansas City recently is typical. Michael Smith said he came back through Los Angeles airport where ''people were lined up to spit on us." Like many stories of the spat-upon veteran genre, Smith's lacks credulity. GIs landed at military airbases, not civilian airports, and protesters could not have gotten onto the bases and anywhere near deplaning troops. There may have been exceptions, of course, but in those cases how would protesters have known in advance that a plane was being diverted to a civilian site? And even then, returnees would have been immediately bused to nearby military installations and processed for reassignment or discharge. The exaggerations in Smith's story are characteristic of those told by others. ''Most Vietnam veterans were spat on when we came back," he said. That's not true. A 1971 Harris poll conducted for the Veterans Administration found over 90 percent of Vietnam veterans reporting a friendly homecoming. Far from spitting on veterans, the antiwar movement welcomed them into its ranks and thousands of veterans joined the opposition to the war. The persistence of spat-upon Vietnam veteran stories suggests that they continue to fill a need in American culture. The image of spat-upon veterans is the icon through which many people remember the loss of the war, the centerpiece of a betrayal narrative that understands the war to have been lost because of treason on the home front. Jane Fonda's noisiest detractors insist she should have been prosecuted for giving aid and comfort to the enemy, in conformity with the law of the land. But the psychological dimensions of the betrayal mentality are far more interesting than the legal. Betrayal is about fear, and the specter of self-betrayal is the hardest to dispel. The likelihood that the real danger to America lurks not outside but inside the gates is unsettling. The possibility that it was failure of masculinity itself, the meltdown of the core component of warrior culture, that cost the nation its victory in Vietnam has haunted us ever since. Many tellers of the spitting tales identify the culprits as girls, a curious quality to the stories that gives away their gendered subtext. Moreover, the spitting images that emerged a decade after the troops had come home from Vietnam are similar enough to the legends of defeated German soldiers defiled by women upon their return from World War I, and the rejection from women felt by French soldiers when they returned from their lost war in Indochina, to suggest something universal and troubling at work in their making. One can reject the presence of a collective subconscious in the projection of those anxieties, as many scholars would, but there is little comfort in the prospect that memories of group spit-ins, like Smith has, are just fantasies conjured in the imaginations of aging veterans. Remembering the war in Vietnam through the images of betrayal is dangerous because it rekindles the hope that wars like it, in countries where we are not welcomed, can be won. It disparages the reputation of those who opposed that war and intimidates a new generation of activists now finding the courage to resist Vietnam-type ventures in the 21st century. Today, on the 30th anniversary of the end of the war in Vietnam, new stories of spat-upon veterans appear faster than they can be challenged. Debunking them one by one is unlikely to slow their proliferation but, by contesting them where and when we can, we engage the historical record in a way that helps all of us remember that, in the end, soldiers and veterans joined with civilians to stop a war that should have never been fought.
I don't why you felt compelled to post this in Old Hippies, but I WILL tell you this: if my bro Homebudz says he was spit on when he got back to the world THEN HE WAS SPIT ON WHEN HE GOT BACK TO THE WORLD - END OF STORY!
Malcomx88 I think you are out of tune with reality, if you believe what the straight press says about anything that has to do with Vietnam, over the word of a vet. I think it would probably be a good idea for you not to bother one in person.
the funny thing is, its the straight press that perpetuates myths of hippies being charles manson type people. This is the lingering image of the aftermath of the vietnam war, that vets were spit upon by hippies. My point is that this isnt and wasnt the case. Case in point, that guy who spit in jane fondas face the other day, he wasnt a hippie, and she isnt a vet. I just am so sick of this mythical portrayal of all these tired and sad troops comong home after vietnam and then being spat upon. Its absurb, I cant help you if you still want to believe it. Plus, I encourage you to find one single instance of it being reported in ANY newspaper ever. I mean, the Macdonald killing, manson altamont etc... all were reported by the straight press. Those incidents tarnished the hippie image forever, why wouldnt the straight press report about spat upon vets if it happened. its not like the press is all that kind towards hippies, how many tv shows are on now that revolve around hippie values, how many newspapers are run by people of conscience. Its silly, to portray events in the vietnam era as different then they were. Yes antiwar people were upset about the war, but who wasnt. Plus what has to be examined, is why hippies would spit on vets who most likely would be on their side, just look at Born on the fourth of july, a vet who came home and protested.
Back in the daze I ran with a number of Vets...in college, relatives, and the local hometown. Never saw one abused by anyone, freak or straight. Wait I take that back, when they ran with us they had trouble with John Law till they'd pull out their military I.D., then we'd all get a break cuz we was with them.
