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kate
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 Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 7:04 am Post subject: |
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Well according to the Myth folks this just did not happen, since it wasn't reported until the 1980s
Debunker!
CBS Evening News
for Monday, Dec 27, 1971
Headline: Vietnam Veteran
Abstract:
(Studio) January, 1971, report on medics in Vietnam recalled; retd. medic featured.
REPORTER: Charles Collingwood
| Quote: | (Manhattan, Kansas)
Delmar Pickett, Junior, hero, returns from Vietnam, finds US indifferent to war; vets' unemployment high; returns to school at Kansas State University as better student than before Vietnam experience.
[Student Gwyn STEERE - speaks of Pickett's modesty.]
[Vietnam film from earlier feature shown.]
Pickett home is in Olsburg, Kansas.
[PICKETT - tells of being spit on in Seattle, WA.]
Disillusioned but not downed by Vietnam experience.
[PICKETT - tells of experience as medic in Vietnam.]
[Father Delmar PICKETT, Senior - says son more settled.]
[MOTHER - says son a much better student than formerly.]
Drugs no problem for Pickett.
2 1/2 million Vietnam vets. |
REPORTER: Morton Dean
Broadcast Type: Evening News Segment Type: News Content
Header Link 214552
Record Number: 214568
Begin Time: 05:52:20 pm
End Time: 05:58:00 pm
Duration: 05:40
Reporters: Collingwood, Charles; Dean, Morton
http://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/fulldisplay.pl?SID=20060624230743408&UID=&CID=47160&auth=&code=TVN&RC=214568&Row=3
TheTelevision News Archive Collection at Vanderbilt University
open web link
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kate
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| Posted: Sun Feb 04, 2007 10:51 pm Post subject: |
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In the news again...
newsbusters
| Quote: | Resolving The Spitting Debate
Posted by Dan Riehl on February 3, 2007
There's a growing blog debate going on as regards peace activists spitting on returning veterans during the Vietnam era. It begins here at Slate in an article claiming the charges are false.
The myth of the spat-upon Vietnam veteran refuses to die.
At Volokh, Jim Lindgren points out some weaknesses in search mechanisms that could lead to the stories not showing up in contemporaneous reports, leading to the assumption that it didn't happen.
more... |
Visit newsbusters for the entire article, and links.
A good find is Lindgren's article, which points out a potential fallacy in Lembcke's research , and, he turned up another tidbit from that era
volokh
| Quote: | Jim Lindgren, February 3, 2007
There is a flap about whether returning Vietnam veterans were really spat upon (via Instapundit). One commenter at Countercolumn says that Bob Greene, a former Chicago columnist, wrote a column in the 1980s saying that it was a myth. He received so many stories of spitting that he interviewed the purported victims and wrote a book concluding that many such stories were probably true.
Then Jerry Lembcke wrote a book saying it was a myth, that he researched news stories and they started appearing around 1980. I have no independent source of information on this, but having done literally thousands of WESTLAW and LEXIS/NEXIS searches, I can say that when something starts appearing in the press in the early 1980s, that is almost always a function of when these two news services started including the full texts of major newspapers. (I find a clear Feb. 1, 1981 reference in the New York Times.) Although I can't say for certain that Jerry Lembcke made this error in his research, I can say that my students make this error all the time. I haven't yet read either Greene's or Lembke's book, but in my experience when someone says that a word usage or a story starts appearing around 1980 or in the early 1980s, they are almost always reflecting the limitations of their online search database, rather than the origins of the phenomenon they are tracing.
I'm suspicious of the coincidence between Lembke's account and the beginning of full-text coverage in WESTLAW and LEXIS. In other words, did Lembke's research show that such stories began appearing in the early 1980s, or did his research show that by 1981-82, when the major newspapers came online in full text, the story was already well known?
UPDATE: In the comments below are several seemingly credible first-hand accounts of being spat on. In addition, several note a bunch of 1971 published stories (I found one in the June 2, 1971 Chicago Tribune) involving the claims of an anti-John Kerry serviceman that he was spat on.
I was also able to confirm my speculation above that the spitting meme may have been spread long before 1980. Alfred Kitt, after he had resigned as General Counsel to the Army and was working at Yale, wrote a heartfelt Sept. 15, 1971 op-ed in the Washington Post, looking back on working in a situation in which many thought him a war criminal--and even his own family was against him. Kitt also discussed the plight of the ordinary soldier, including this sentence: "You can’t be fond of being spat on, either literally or figuratively, just because of the uniform you’re wearing."
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kate
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| Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2007 3:15 am Post subject: |
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Side note....
In following the links from the newsbusters' article above, and more links from there, I landed on some blogs & posts that reference:
> the June 9, 1971 article from the Reno Evening Gazette that our SBD found
> the CBS Evening News abstract for Monday, Dec 27, 1971 that moi ran across
 glad we be can be a resource, albeit a small one
some thoughts from others...( regret I can't locate links to attribute)
For Lembcke to claim that Vets being spat on is an urban myth, requires that the story not be true. Yet, as we all know from anecdotal reports, clearly some vets were spat upon. Thus, from the outset, Lembcke is starting from a fallacy. His claim is not the strong one that "No veterans were spat on" but rather the weaker one that "there is no evidence that veterans were spat on".
The two references cited above would fall into that 'evidence'.
So much for Lembcke's urban myth if he insists on calling it that, he'll at least need to move the date of it's invention back a decade to the early 1970's.
>If anyone finds more contemporaneous resources (aka 'evidence'), we'll be glad to archive them here
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kate
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| Posted: Sat Feb 10, 2007 12:00 pm Post subject: |
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more from Jim Lindgren
http://volokh.com/posts/1170928927.shtml
| Quote: | Jim Lindgren, February 8, 2007
Many 1967-72 Spitting Incidents Are Documented in the Press.
EVIDENCE:
Contrary to Lembcke’s claims, I quite easily found many accounts published in the 1967-1972 period claiming spitting on servicemen.
For example, on October 6, 1967, John F. Geyer and Bill Bowers, two sailors in uniform on a ten-day leave before shipping out, were accosted and taunted by a group of about ten young men while leaving a high-school football game in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Bowers heard one of them say, “We’re going to get a couple of sailors.” Then one of the band of attackers spat at Geyer, hitting both Geyer and Bowers. Geyer, who was a former high-school football lineman, swung at his attacker. The attacker then stabbed Geyer in the side with a knife. After two hospital stays, Geyer fully recovered. In January and February, 1968, Geyer’s 18-year-old attacker was prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to a reformatory. All this is laid out in a series of stories in the local newspaper, the Bucks County Courier Times.
This was one of many stories published in American newspapers in the late 1960s and early 1970s in which American servicemen were spat on by citizens or anti-war protesters or the opposite: pro-war servicemen or citizens spat on anti-war protesters. (Because Lembcke recognizes the existence of the stories of people spitting on protesters, I'll leave that substantial body of evidence out of this post. Perhaps the most famous example is Ron Kovic, who after heckling Richard Nixon's 1972 acceptance speech, was spat on as he was wheeled from the convention hall.)
Among the journalists who gave first-hand accounts of spitting on soldiers was James Reston, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Spitting was one of the actions tame enough for Reston to describe in his New York Times front page story covering the October 21-22, 1967 Washington anti-war demonstrations: “It is difficult to report publicly the ugly and vulgar provocation of many of the militants. They spat on some of the soldiers in the front line at the Pentagon and goaded them with the most vicious personal slander. Many of the signs carried by a small number of militants . . . are too obscene to print.”
A May 16, 1970 story in the Pomona Progress Bulletin recounted how on May 15, Col. Bowen Smith, head of Claremont Men’s College’s ROTC program, was spat on by protesters as he went to his campus office.
Many newspapers carried a July 21, 1971 AP story about a Northwestern University student, apparently under surveillance by the FBI for many months, who had been observed spitting on a mid-shipman in uniform. She denied that she had done it (presumably she did not deny that some young woman had spat on the mid-shipman).
Several newspapers, including the June 18, 1969 Panama News, printed an interview with General Chapman of the U.S. Marines, in which he “confirmed stories of physical abuse,” including spitting. According to Chapman, a Marine recruiter is invited on campus by the administration, but students have been allowed to enter the area set aside for the Marine recruiter. They “stepped on his hat, smashed cigarettes, spit at him and insulted him. Frequently the recruiters are young officers or NCOs who have served in Vietnam.” They are trained to suffer this abuse in silence. “Marines are under very strict orders not to react, not to talk back, not to fight back. Just to stand in dignified silence.”
Indeed, according to an August 27, 1967 New York Times article by Neil Sheehan, as part of military training in the national guard, soldiers were actually being drilled by being spat on, abuse to which they were instructed not to respond.
One of the more amazing stories of protester abuse of veterans (and one veteran’s violent response) were the attacks on Congressional Medal of Honor winners. In a March 14, 1968 column in the Bucks County Courier Times (and elsewhere), the head of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, WWII Medalist Thomas J. Kelly, reveals that even Medal of Honor winners have been abused and “spat upon as ‘monsters.’”
Kelly recounts how, in an appalling lack of decency, about 200 anti-war protesters showed up to harass the Medal of Honor winners at their annual dinner, held one year in Beverly Hills. Most Medalists were able to dodge the hecklers, but WWII Medalist James Conners was unable to avoid a particularly obnoxious man yelling, “Killer, killer, killer.” Conners decked him.
In the November 14, 1967 New York Times, Pulitzer-Prize winner Max Frankel quoted Jack Risoen, a California Democrat who runs a liquor store: "Last week I took my parents to an American Legion meeting--it was just a memorial service for the First World War dead and outside three kids spit on my father." Imagine that: spitting on a veteran attending a memorial service for dead veterans!
Several articles, such as in the August 3, 1969 Odessa American, refer to anti-war students spitting on ROTC uniforms, without being entirely clear whether the students are in them at the time.
With all this documented spitting going on, not surprisingly there were many more discussions by politicians and writers of letters to the editor complaining about militants spitting on the military. Indeed, one might say that people at the time were almost obsessed with spitting: in just a day of searching, I found dozens of stories about spitting on flags, spitting on police, spitting on the military, and spitting on protesters. Responsible anti-war activists, such as Allard Lowenstein implored students who opposed the war to stop all the spitting (May 14, 1969 WAPO). When California Governor Ronald Reagan insulted another politician with a crack about spitting on the sidewalk, columnist Drew Pearson (November 25, 1967) suggested that perhaps Reagan had a “spitting gap” as big as his “credibility gap.”
The tipping point seemed to come with the White House’s efforts to found a counterforce to John Kerry’s Vietnam Veterans Against the War. In early June 1971, there was a huge press push to trumpet the new organization headed by (among others) John O’Neill (later of Swift Boat fame) and Jim Minarik. The first paragraph of the most common story included a claim by Minarik that “he walked out of doors in his uniform and he was twice spat upon.”
Over the following eight months, there was an explosion of concern about the shabby treatment of veterans returning from Vietnam, discussions in which some version of Minarik’s story seemed to resonate. In July 1971, a month after Minarik’s story hit, Birch Bayh was spat on in a Florida airport by a man reported to be a pro-war Vietnam veteran. Bayh’s attacker was neither arrested, nor (apparently) questioned by the police.
In August,(1971) a contract with the Veterans Administration, Harris conducted a poll of Vietnam-era veterans, employers, and the general public to assess how veterans were adjusting to life at home. The study would be released in January 1972 to much handwringing.
Even the anti-war movement took notice. Several of the fall 1971 demonstrations adopted explicitly pro-troops orientations. And anti-war servicemen had long been welcome in most anti-war organizations, but particularly (of course) Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
In the December 11, 1971, Stars and Stripes, the brilliant behavioral scientist Norman Zinberg wrote about the three weeks he spent that fall in Vietnam studying heroin addiction for the DOD. By then, the stories of harassment and spitting were so engrained in the minds of soldiers that they used them as excuses for their addictions. Zinberg writes about a difference from earlier wars:
The society which sent the soldier to fight not only does not reward him for his participation, but in fact is often hostile to him. EM (Enlisted men) repeatedly told me bitter and poignant stories (some of them undoubtedly apocryphal about two types of letters they received from home).
One would be from a buddy who would report that he had walked down a street in “The World” still in uniform and somebody had harassed or even spat on him. The other type of letter, described even more bitterly, would be from a civilian wanting to know, “Have you really killed any babies?”
Note that by late 1971, the spitting story (in a form much like Minarik’s) had become such a cliche that Zinberg probably correctly surmised that more a few tellings of it are not literally true.
In any event, by the fall of 1971 the story of the spat upon serviceman was both well known and much written about. Lembcke’s first and second arguments are simply wrong: Stories of gob-covered servicemen started appearing in the press when anti-war protesters started spitting on them in the late 1960s, not around 1980.
+++++++
Lembcke’s 3rd Argument: RETURNING SOLDIERS DID NOT LAND AT SAN FRANCISCO OR LA COMMERCIAL AIRPORTS.
Again, I am amazed that Lembcke would simply state this without checking. The May 7, 1967 New York Times story on re-entry into civilian life states: “Almost all veterans are flown back from Vietnam, usually in commercial jets.” There are many press stories about servicemen flying to and from Vietnam through commercial airports, particularly on the US west coast.
+++++++
Lembcke’s 4th Argument: GIRLS DON’T SPIT”
If you read enough accounts of the vulgarity of some of the anti-war protesters of the period, Lembcke’s notion that “girls don’t spit” is almost laughable. Beyond the two examples I already gave of young female anti-war protesters spitting on servicemen, I found many examples of female Vietnam protesters spitting on police or other authority figures. Here are three of many:
The L.A. Times of February 27, 1969, like many other newspapers that week, recounts an anti-war female student spitting on University of Chicago Dean James Redfield.
Another first-hand account of spitting on police by an anti-war demonstrator was published in the Washington Post under the byline of Pulitzer-Prize winner Carl Bernstein on May 7, 1970. A woman described by Bernstein as a “girl” and a “University of Maryland Coed” “spit at a policeman, then called him a ‘pig’ and a ‘filthy swine.’” Less than an hour later,” the same woman “offered a flower to a different police officer,” saying, “It’s not your fault.”
Ben A. Franklin, writing in the January 26, 1969 New York Times, talks about the “provocatory tactics employed by the children here”: “The spit of a sweet-faced girl ran down a policeman’s jacket. Endless insults and [tiny] burning American flags . . . were thrown at the police on the parade route.”
I guess some young women do spit!
+++++++
On the issues raised by Professor Lembcke, I have to say that I'll take the world of Congressional Medal of Honor winners and Pulitzer-Prize winning journalists for the New York Times and Washington Post over the professor's armchair speculations--especially since many of the former actually witnessed the events they described, while the professor appears not to have made a serious attempt to review the available evidence before publishing his book.
There Are More Blockbuster Revelations to Come on Some of Jerry Lembcke’s Other Arguments (in a few days).
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Documentation of Lindgren's research:
I've recovered images of original news articles for the items highlighted above. Will look for more, and try to post here
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Last edited by kate on Sat Feb 24, 2007 9:51 am; edited 2 times in total |
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kate
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| Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 4:21 am Post subject: |
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DEBUNKERS
referenced in Lindgren's research in above post...
click the thumbnail for a larger image
Sailor Improving After Knifing At Game
Bucks County Courier Times (PA)
Oct 9, 1967
they spat on them, then....
John F. Geyer and Bill Bowers, two sailors in uniform on a ten-day leave before shipping out, were accosted and taunted by a group of about ten young men while leaving a high-school football game in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Bowers heard one of them say, “We’re going to get a couple of sailors.”
Medal Of Honor Winners Find Themselves Subjected To Abuse
Sheboygan Press (WI)
March 16, 1968
they have been... abused and “spat upon as ‘monsters.’”
Everyone Lost in Seige Of Pentagon
James Reston, New York Times News Service
reprinted in the
Oshkosh Daily Northwestern (WI)
Oct 23,1967
That two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, James Reston must have been dreaming when he wrote this in 1967, since as we all know this spitting and vulgar behaviour by protestors is all a myth -- just ask Lembecke
“It is difficult to report publicly the ugly and vulgar provocation of many of the militants. They spat on some of the soldiers in the front line at the Pentagon and goaded them with the most vicious personal slander. Many of the signs carried by a small number of militants . . . are too obscene to print.”
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kate
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| Posted: Sat Feb 24, 2007 10:01 am Post subject: |
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a couple more DEBUNKERS - referenced in Lindgren's research in above post...
click the thumbnail for a larger image
Marines Lose Campus Battle
Playground Daily News
(Fort Walton Beach, FLA)
June 16, 1969
..an interview with General Chapman of the U.S. Marines, in which he “confirmed stories of physical abuse,” including spitting....... They are trained to suffer this abuse in silence. “Marines are under very strict orders not to react, not to talk back, not to fight back. Just to stand in dignified silence.
This is an important article, and there are likely more similiar references. It is reflective of the extraordinary discipline of one with military training. And explains why there may be a dearth of police-blotter-reports of abuse of our military -- they just walked away from such confrontations in dignified silence....
Girl demonstrator Faces Loss of Job
Edwardsville Intelligencer (Illinois)
July 19, 1971
...AP story about a Northwestern University student, apparently under surveillance by the FBI for many months, who had been observed spitting on a mid-shipman in uniform. She denied that she had done it
shhhh - that MYTH guy said that girls didn't spit
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kate
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| Posted: Sat Feb 24, 2007 10:24 am Post subject: |
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Jim Lindgren at Volokh.com is doing a significant amount of research and analysis on this issue to DEBUNK the MYTH guys
Below is a recap of his blog postings thus far (check for updates)
Note:
--Added some short excerpts - that don't do justice to the body of his research. And, he has the documentation.
--I've made live links to the blog entries, give them a sec to load & bring up that portion of the page
--Some posts are lengthy, and you may need to click "show the rest" or "more" to view the entire post
Jim Lindgren, February 3, 2007
Vietnam Spitting | Quote: | | I was also able to confirm my speculation above that the spitting meme may have been spread long before 1980. Alfred Kitt, after he had resigned as General Counsel to the Army and was working at Yale, wrote a heartfelt Sept. 15, 1971 op-ed in the Washington Post, looking back on working in a situation in which many thought him a war criminal--and even his own family was against him. Kitt also discussed the plight of the ordinary soldier, including this sentence: "You can’t be fond of being spat on, either literally or figuratively, just because of the uniform you’re wearing." |
Jim Lindgren, February 8, 2007
Many 1967-72 Spitting Incidents Are Documented in the Press. | Quote: | I have been looking into these and other claims by Lembcke and they appear to hold about as much water as do his notions about a primal (wet) unconscious.
It is surprising that, without his having done an exhaustive review of published sources in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Lembcke would manufacture such a speculative argument, essentially treating hundreds of eyewitnesses as victims of “false memory” (at best).
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| Quote: | | On the issues raised by Professor Lembcke, I have to say that I'll take the world of Congressional Medal of Honor winners and Pulitzer-Prize winning journalists for the New York Times and Washington Post over the professor's armchair speculations--especially since many of the former actually witnessed the events they described, while the professor appears not to have made a serious attempt to review the available evidence before publishing his book. |
Jim Lindgren, February 21, 2007
Spitting Report, Part II:
Of Civilian Airports and Attempted Debunkings.
| Quote: | Perhaps the most bizarre claim made by those who are trying to debunk the spitting stories is that returning servicemen didn’t fly directly into commercial airports on the West Coast. Army regulations tell a different story. There are extensive regulations governing military personnel flying from overseas on commercial airlines into commercial airports, some of which are summarized in Army Regulations (612-5) and on the form “Commercial Air Travel Information Sheet,” which was given to servicemen flying back from Vietnam to commercial airports other than the standard commercial ones of San Francisco, Seattle, or JFK, or such military airports as Travis AFB and McChord AFB.
There were four West Coast locations designated for returning soldiers as “aerial debarkation” ports or “arrival points” within the continental US on direct flights from overseas: Travis AFB in Fairfield, CA ([north]east of Oakland), McChord AFB in Tacoma, WA, San Francisco International Airport, and Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (1969 AR 612-5; 1973 AR 612-5). Chart 2.1 from 1969 AR 612.5 shows the San Francisco International Airport as one of these four main “aerial debarkation” ports for servicemen returning from the Far East |
Jim Lindgren, February 21, 2007
SPITTING REPORT III:
EVIDENCE RELEVANT TO ONE OF BOB GREENE’S SPITTING ACCOUNTS. | Quote: | And it shows that spitting stories do not necessarily feed some psychological need to account for the U.S. losing the war. Further, spitting was claimed to be witnessed by someone who had the anti-brass orientation that Lembcke for some reason thinks is being denied by those who claim that servicemen were spat upon.
Although neither the government report nor the contemporaneous Tribune news story directly confirms John Kelley’s account, they do confirm that Guardsmen were spat upon at the place Kelly reports during one of the times that the National Guard was posted in front of the Hilton. And, of course, the Walker Report and the Tribune account are both contemporaneous accounts of spitting on troops
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Jim Lindgren, February 21, 2007
Spitting Report IV:
Opposition To The Troops
| Quote: | Note that in 380 stories from two major papers, Beamish et al. classified 279 instances of anti-troop behavior, which constituted 56% of the total of 495 coded instances. Counting 279 instances of anti-troop behavior in 380 stories sounds like a lot to me. They found 172 instances in which the demonstrators took some sort of action opposed to the troops (such as presumably waving the Viet Cong flag or cheering for a victory for Ho Chi Minh) and 27 instances in which the demonstrators themselves characterized their actions as anti-troops. They also found 75 instances in which others accused the demonstrators of being anti-troops, 74 instances in which the protesters were coded as pro-troops (such as protesters arguing to bring the troops “home alive”), and 142 instances of the demonstrators being against military elites (anti-brass).
Yet Lembcke falsely claims that only 6% of the 495 instances “could be construed as antagonistic behavior by the anti-war movement against GIs or veterans.” If you look at Beamish et al.’s chart (above), you can see what Lembcke did. He took the 6% of cases in which the demonstrators openly declared their opposition to the rank-and-file troops and falsely described this narrow subset of cases as if it were the numbers for the larger, “extremely liberal interpretation of what counted as a report of anti-troop behavior.”
I’ll be generous and call Lembcke’s sleight of hand extraordinarily sloppy. However it occurred, it is a very serious error to report (as Lembcke has repeatedly done) a 56% incidence of anti-troop behavior as a 6% incidence of anti-troop behavior, especially when Lembcke goes out of his way to quote Beamish et al.’s description (of the 56% figure) as representing "any portrayal that implied, even indirectly, a troop-blaming orientation."
LIMITATIONS OF THE BEAMISH STUDY
<snip>
While Beamish et al. seem highly skeptical of these spitting stories, they note that these stories typically involve hostility “not from organized protesters, but from random bystanders.” Since their study covered only organized protests, they make clear that “We have no evidence to test the veracity of Greene’s accounts.” Id. Disturbingly, Lembcke uses Beamish et al. as evidence against stories of spat-upon returning veterans (such as many of Bob Greene’s stories), when the Beamish study explicitly says that they have NO EVIDENCE to test these accounts. |
Jim Lindgren, February 22, 2007
Spitting Report V:
Servicemen and Anti-War Activists at the Airport | Quote: | And Lembcke is just being silly with his implication that for protesters to be lined up at a civilian airport, they would have to have had advance notice of when troops were arriving by plane.
An article on the USO club at the civilian San Francisco airport describes how in December 1969, their busiest month so far, 54,766 servicemen stopped into the USO club; the picture accompanying the article shows a soldier signing into a log (December 17, 1970, San Mateo Times). That’s over 1,500 a day. That’s probably just a fraction of the military personnel who went through that civilian airport every day. Many who arrived at the airport by bus or car from the Oakland Army Terminal would have simply caught their flights for home.
Saying that you went through the San Francisco airport on the way to or from home or another military installation is something that perhaps 500,000 to 2 million men and women in the service did every year. Anti-war activists would not need to be informed about when troops would be arriving by plane to have a critical mass of targets for recruiting or abuse. While significantly fewer service personnel would have passed through LAX, the numbers should still have been huge.
Antiwar activists did stake out the San Francisco civilian airport because there were so many vets returning from Vietnam going through the airport. Indeed, they went to the SF Airport “because it was ‘the first civilian ground they'd set foot on back in the states.’" (Tip to Kevin Bowman) Activist Steve Rees writes in his 1979 book, They Should Have Served Coffee, that their standard greeting to servicemen was: "Hey, soldier. Welcome home. F**k the Army. Read all about it in this paper. No charge." (p. 159) |
Jim Lindgren, February 23, 2007
Spitting Report VI:
Academic Folklore. | Quote: | That's the problem with Whig History.
Even some VC commenters seem to be seeing things from an almost exclusively presentist lens. But it's Lembcke's pre-occupation with the current-day implications of spitting stories that may be causing his problems in seeing the past clearly. Not everyone lines up the same on every war. Some of us opposed the Vietnam War (and are not ashamed of our opposition to it), but that doesn't mean that we were blind to the nastier side of that movement. Attitudes toward the military are nothing like they were then, a fact that I think some younger readers may find it hard to credit fully |
About Jim Lindgren
Let’s hope a research paper…or even a book follows
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Last edited by kate on Sat Mar 10, 2007 10:57 pm; edited 5 times in total |
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kate
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| Posted: Sat Feb 24, 2007 10:56 am Post subject: |
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The pot is certainly stirring... between the MYTH guys and the DEBUNKERS
slate.com
Newsweek Throws the Spitter
The magazine repeats the myth of the gobbed-upon Vietnam vet.
By Jack Shafer Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2007,
| Quote: |
The myth of the spat-upon Vietnam veteran refuses to die. Despite Jerry Lembcke's debunking book from 1998, Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam, and my best efforts to publicize his work, the press continues to repeat the fables as fact.
Earlier this month, Newsweek resuscitated the vet-spit myth in a dual profile of John McCain and Chuck Hagel. Newsweek reports: "Returning GIs were sometimes jeered and even spat upon in airports; they learned to change quickly into civilian clothes."
more... |
just one minute
February 01, 2007
Why Is Jack Shafer Peddling Politicized Nonsense?
Tom Maguire on February 01, 2007
| Quote: |
The normally astute Jack Shafer of Slate is backing the wrong pony .............
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slate.com
Spitfire
Vietnam veterans were gobbed on, insist angry readers and critical bloggers.
By Jack Shafer Monday, Feb. 5, 2007
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The idea that Vietnam veterans returning from the war were spat upon by protesters is fixed in many minds, notably the score of readers who e-mailed me to dispute my Jan. 30 column that declared the story an "urban myth." They know vets got spat on because it happened to them, they wrote.
<snip>
"The uniform of [Army] soldiers is spat upon in the streets and its wearers are denounced in public places as 'war criminal.' " A June 9, 1971, op-ed (whose provenance I cannot vouch for) states that veteran Jim Minarik claims to have been "twice spat upon" as well as "denied restaurant service" because of his uniform. (The op-ed is posted in the comment section of this Web site.) Ed:link is to this website
There's more. The Television News Archive lists an abstract from a Dec. 27, 1971, CBS Evening News segment in which returning vet Delmar Pickett tells of being spat upon in Seattle. (I've ordered a copy of the segment and will write about it upon receipt.)
more ............ |
-----Minarik is featured Reno Evening Gazette of June 9, 1971 - which is posted upthread (found by our SBD in 2005)
-----That CBS Evening News segment Monday, Dec 27, 1971 is also posted upthread ( found by moi last year)
slate.com
More Spit Takes
Searching the news archives for evidence of spat-upon returning Viet vets.
By Jack Shafer Monday, Feb. 12, 2007
| Quote: | <snip>
But for all his industry, Lindgren has failed so far to produce a contemporaneous news account—or other corroborative evidence—of a protester ambushing a returning veteran with a gob of spit, which I take as the main point of Lembcke's book, Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam.
Lembcke has responded to Lindgren's challenge in an e-mail, which he's sent to his critics. I publish it here as a sidebar. For the point-counterpoint effect, open Lindgren's piece in one browser window and Lembcke's response in another.
I, too, have been probing the newspaper archives. As I've written before, I'm prepared to believe that returning Vietnam vets were ambushed at the airports by protesters. I just want to see the evidence.
more....... |
-----He mentions Minarik again, considers his account questionable, as he was a cohort of John O'Neill & Vets for a Just Peace
.......he suggests Minarik come forward and give more details of what he said in 1971
.......( and he tosses in a a reference to Swift Vets)
slate.com
Jerry Lembcke's ( aka the MYTH guy) Response to Jim Lindgren
no date
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Last edited by kate on Sun Apr 27, 2008 12:49 am; edited 8 times in total |
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kate
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Location: Upstate, New York
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| Posted: Sat Feb 24, 2007 11:40 am Post subject: |
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DEBUNKERS
The MYTH guys just can't accept the fact that there may be contemporaneous, published articles that discuss incidences of spitting on our Military-- seems police blotter records would be the only thing acceptable to them as evidence . That FBI arrest of a protester in the article upthread doesn't count - so they say
I can't recall in which of their articles, who made a point that it wasn't something being discussed in that time period.
These following items DEBUNK that theory. People certainly were writing this type of commentary or essay in 1969 & 1971, because is was an already well known issue.
click thumbnail to enlarge
Sees Need of Respect For Soldier
Columbus Evening Dispatch (Ohio)
Feb 8, 1969
George Cornell, AP Religion Writer
soldiers treated…like second class citizens
hostilities directed at soldiers, they have been spat upon
Larry belanger
Words and Music
Mountainview Democrat
(Placerville, CA)
Nov 18, 1971
you damn baby-butcher, you deserve the same things you did to those kids in Vietnam
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Last edited by kate on Sun Feb 25, 2007 7:11 am; edited 3 times in total |
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Deuce
Senior Chief Petty Officer
Joined: 19 Mar 2005
Posts: 589
Location: FL
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| Posted: Sat Feb 24, 2007 2:23 pm Post subject: |
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All,
We know we can state with absolute certainty, that if, hypothetically speaking of course, a Veteran were to spit on, say, John Murtha or Jane Fonda, that a case of Assault would be brought against the Veteran by a high priced lawyer. Is anyone aware of any Assault case ever being brought against a leftie spitter?...that would explain a lot, just another 'pass' for the left.
Deuce
America used to be a country of laws...has gradually become a country of lawyers (mostly liberal). |
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kate
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Location: Upstate, New York
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| Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2007 12:13 am Post subject: |
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Deuce -
Hanoi Jane did get hers back in April 2005. The Vet was arrested - can't recall if charges were dropped
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kate
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| Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2007 12:45 am Post subject: |
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DEBUNKERS
More spitting talk going on, in the '60s & '70s
No police blotter stuff that those MYTH guys are looking for as proof
Does seem odd, though, all these people talking about spitting, or being spit on, in the contemporaneous time period...if it wasn't really happening, and was just a MYTH. Why then would they be talking about it.
Seems to me, you needn't be a PhD to figure this out. People were talking about it because it was part of the national conscience. Perhaps the MYTH guys won't accept that, because they do not want it to be true -- they can't deal with the truth it represents -- That a generation of spitters owes a generation of Vets an apology.
click the thumbnails...
A Sailor’s Open Letter
Times Recorder
(Zanesville,Ohio)
August 16, 1970
Don’t spit on me, attack me, or accost me…
Letter to editor by a Kent State senior
Chronicle Telegram
(Elyria, Ohio)
May12,1970
...guardsmen not to react to spitting, rock-throwing protestors
(satire)
This one is off the meme of the thread - 'lil extra tidbit
Here's the godfather of protesters- role modeling for his throngs - on spitting
Demonstrator Plan: Follow 3 Candidates
Lima News
(Ohio)
September 19, 1968
Tom Hayden arrest for spitting on a detective
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kate
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| Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2007 7:43 am Post subject: |
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Another 'lil DEBUNKER where a soldier contemporaneously reports that he was spit on.
click the thumbnail
No Victory Parades Part 4**
** posted here is an interview with the local city editor, that was printed within the
main body of the original exerpted article by Murray Polner - I cut/pasted to display just this story
The Dominion News
( Morganstown, West Virginia)
May 28, 1972
Interview with Stewart Burge, ( City Editor of this paper)
.....I was spit on, had rocks thrown at me
We've posted news reports from Nevada, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, Illinois, Ohio, California, West Virginia, New York ...good cross-section of the country. And fairly easy to find. Wonder under which rock those MYTH guys were looking?? Their MYTH fallacy is a dish best-served with copious amounts of crow.
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Last edited by kate on Tue Feb 27, 2007 1:16 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Deuce
Senior Chief Petty Officer
Joined: 19 Mar 2005
Posts: 589
Location: FL
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| Posted: Mon Feb 26, 2007 10:40 pm Post subject: |
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kate,
The Swifties are lucky to have you on their side, that's for sure. You've got quite a knack for research, you and that computer of yours!!!
I'm impressed, as I'm sure are all those indebted to your efforts!
Deuce |
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kate
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Joined: 14 May 2004
Posts: 1891
Location: Upstate, New York
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| Posted: Sat Mar 03, 2007 1:11 am Post subject: |
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aw thanks Deuce
it's the least I can do for those that have served..
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