Reddit reviews The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam

Vietnam veterans getting spit on has largely been debunked as a myth. Most people take it as true because Rambo said it in First Blood.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/press_box/2000/05/drooling_on_the_vietnam_vets.html

There is a whole book about it. http://www.amazon.com/The-Spitting-Image-Memory-Vietnam/dp/0814751474

Oh joy, another baby boomer sociology book.



Here are some comprehensive reviews of this book that might be worth reading.



Here is one of many instances of mistreatment of veterans.



Here is another vets recollection of the time, showing poor treatment.



Here is another article describing the spitting.



Here is an article describing anti-war protesters spitting at soldiers for the Iraq war.



Here is a book by a University History professor, with sources, indicating that it all did indeed happen.



And last, but not least, Here is a time machine, so you can travel back to before you made this comment and slap yourself.



Even worse than mistreating the veterans of yesteryear is pretending that no mistreatment ever occurred to placate your' own ego.

"Troops returning in uniform were spit on by strangers in bus stations"

That's a myth

The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam

Debunking a spitting image

There was more than a story about it, there was an entire book: The Spitting Image By Jerry Lembecke http://www.amazon.com/The-Spitting-Image-Memory-Vietnam/dp/0814751474



Article by lembcke at VVAW site: http://www.vvaw.org/veteran/article/?id=350

Slate rehashing the story as covered by NYT and USNWR: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/press_box/2000/05/drooling_on_the_vietnam_vets.single.html





Here are the notes I have from previous attempts to track this legend down. The most important thing to note is that the soldiers did not land at civilian airports when returning from over seas.


Spitting Image, Lembcke, 79-81

> Pressed to remember when the first heard that Vietnam veterans had
> been spat upon, many people will say they do not recall. Many others
> will say that the read it in something that bob Greene, a syndicated
> columnist for the Chicago tribune, wrote. In one of his columns in the
> mid 80s he posed the following question to Vietnam veterans: Did
> anyone spit on you when you returned from Vietnam? He heard from over
> a thousand veterans, some saying they had been spat upon, others
> saying they had not been. some said the idea of spat upon veterans was
> a myth or folklore. One called it a "figment of someone's
> imagination," while others called it "unadulterated balderdash!"
> Greene published some of the responses in a four part series of
> columns and printed many more in his 1989 book homecoming. The book
> contains 63 personal accounts of experiences with spitting and 69
> accounts of spit free homecomings.

> Green had been skeptical of the spat-upon veterans tales because the
> stories were too uniform: a dirty, long-haired hippy spits on a clean
> cut GI at the San Fran airport. Weren't hippies too passive to be
> spitting on anyone much less on people they allegedly considered to be
> trained killers? Greene was also unsure enough of the authenticity of
> some of the letters that he attempted to verify where the writers were
> really veterans at all. He does not say how many were thrown out as
> bogus, but he added the caveat that there might be a ringer or two in
> there.

> Greene's skepticism was warranted,but in the end he was too wiling to
> suspend disbelief. In fact there was much more wrong with his
> testimonies than he acknowledged to his readers. In the first place
> there is Greene?s own question "Were you spat upon?" Had he asked a
> more neutral question such as, "What were your homecoming
> experiences?" the veterans responses could have been much more valid.
> Second there is the curious fact that many of Greene?s spat upon
> veterans claimed the spitter was a girl or woman. Told this students
> of gender are likely to respond,l "it has too be a myth. Girls don't
> spit." This being the case Greene?s stories prompt a different and
> more interesting question: why were the homecoming memories of war
> veterans remembered in this way? Whatever the expected male/female
> balance of spitting frequency is, the stories collected by Greene
> contain clues to how the political, psychological and cultural
> dimensions of memory are linked. Finally there is the troublesome fact
> that these claims surfaced fifteen years after they supposedly
> happened. And those were not just any fifteen years. From the late 70s
> on there was an unrelenting drumbeat of political and cultural
> interest in the forgotten Vietnam veteran. The award winning 78 film
> coming home broke a period of silence about Vietnam by recasting the
> was as a story about the homecoming of us soldiers. Four years later
> the dedication of the wall focused the countries emotional energies on
> its neglect of veterans. The enormously popular Rambo films presented
> the nation with specific images of returned soldiers being besieged by
> their peers. While it would concede too much to the power of political
> and popular culture to believe that a false memory of abuse was simply
> induced in the minds of veterans by political speeches news stories
> and films few social scientists would discount the likelihood that
> Greene?s findings were skewed by those factors.

Vietnam and other American fantasies, Bruce Franklin, pg 61

> The myth is so strong that it has even determined their memory of
> where thy arrived for they were flown back not to these civilian
> airports but to military bases closed to outsiders...

ibid, footnote 39 to pages 61 -63 pg.211

> Barry Romo a former infantry platoon leader in Vietnam has spent three
> decades tracking down veterans who claim they were spat on. many then
> tell him "well it wasn't actually me but my buddy told me about it."
> But some do believe it happened to them until he explores the
> incidents with the supposed victims. they then discover that the
> remembered spitting incidents are a product of the collective belief
> system. "Seventy five percent of these guys were amazed to discover
> they didn't get off in San Francisco or la" Romo reports but at
> military bases. they remember flying home on civilian airlines with
> stewardesses serving meals. and this memory fits their image of
> arriving at civilian airports. Indeed they did fly back on civilian
> airlines, airlines under military charter that landed at Travis air
> force base, thirty five miles NE from Oakland, or much less frequently
> at Norton air force base near San Bernardino ]. from Travis the
> returnees were bused directly to Oakland army terminal (army) or
> Treasure Island (navy and marines) to complete their discharge
> procedures which usually took one to three days. Romo has found only
> on veteran who remained convinced that he had been spat upon. After
> three hours of of discussing what actually happened he recalled that
> he had berated a teenager passing out anti-war leaflets in a tunnel at
> la airport; they started fighting and during the fight the youth spat
> upon him"

Bullshit. http://bonosrama.newsvine.com/_news/2010/04/13/4151975-no-evidence-vietnam-soldiers-were-spit-upon

That story is an urban myth.

Further: http://www.amazon.com/Spitting-Image-Jerry-Lembcke/dp/0814751474

Never a confirmed case of anyone spitting on a returning soldier. An author searched high and low and found nothing. That's a lie Conservatives like to tell themselves (among many, many others). https://www.amazon.com/Spitting-Image-Memory-Legacy-Vietnam/dp/0814751474

My dad was also in Vietnam and worked as a doctor in a va hospital afterwards, and his experience was the opposite of your dad's. Him and most of the veterans he knew and worked with never experienced any negative talk back upon returning home. It always happened to a friend of a friend. The only ones who claimed it happened to them directly were so-called "loud mouths", some of whom were caught lying about their combat experience during group therapy (most of them never left state side). But I'll give your dad the benefit of the doubt and assume he is either an incredibly isolated case or he's just another one innocently reporting what he heard from a friend of a friend.

Anyway, here's a link to a book discussing the urban legend: http://www.amazon.com/Spitting-Image-Memory-Legacy-Vietnam/dp/0814751474

Interestingly, I have read Spitting Image where the sociology professor says it is largely a myth.

I never claimed that I could. If you'll take a second to look back at my original comment it clearly states: "I learned it from a veteran who witnessed it."

This was all I said. I never mentioned that I had any other sources. Just this. However, it's obvious that one could find sources to argue either side with 15 seconds of Google-Fu. Here's two examples: One stating that this didn't occur, and one stating that it did.

Honestly, I don't care to continue volleying with you. I feel I've been very precise in my statements, and don't feel that you really care to hear what I'm saying. You just feel the need to counter me. So, with this.. have a great Friday. I hope you have an enjoyable weekend.

I don't refer to it as my ultimate authority, it was just the most concise.

there are many places you can look on the internet to refute this urban legend, but most of them point to this book, probably because it's the only researched study of the phenomenon. You can believe what you want, but until you research it and write a book on it, it's just some rumor you heard.

>To many of the trans people I've communicated with, Jeff was not simply saying Zeke was deceitful, but that to be trans is to be deceitful. On national television no less. Whether he means it in his heart or not is sort of beside the point.

When people have said 'he didn't mean it' I believe they are referring to the outing, period. Varner never said being trans was deceitful, in fact he immediately said the opposite. You could argue that he equivocated with his whole 'capability to deceive' logic, but that's the extent of what you can accuse him of. This reminds me of the myth that Vietnam veterans were 'spat on' when they came home from the war. How the audience has interpreted these events, for good or for bad, has got to be attributed more to the producers who set this up and neatly edited it for us, the national tv audience.

The idea that Vietnam vets were spat on when they returned home is largely a myth. Whilst it may have happened in isolated cases, the myth holds that every time soldiers flew back from Vietnam and were passing through the airport in uniform they got spat on by anti-war hippies. Only problem is soldiers never landed at normal airports but military bases, and do you think that a trained soldier wouldn't punch a hippie in face after getting spat on? But there isn't a single confirmed police report, news report or first hand account, an author did research and couldn't find a single plausible occurrence:

https://www.amazon.com/Spitting-Image-Memory-Legacy-Vietnam/dp/0814751474#productDescription_secondary_view_div_1503485373884

It was largely made up after the war in order to discredit the voices in the anti-war movement in future conflicts. I'm not going to comment on how soldiers were treated in other circumstances but he idea they were spat on all the time when they returned is largely a myth.

That's a pretty worthwhile read, but it is highly anecdotal and there are some things that one could be questioned further.

The one that caught my eye most readily was this:

"Troops returning in uniform were spit on by strangers in bus stations."

That's a questionable generalization; so much so that an entire book was written just on that very image. A book that is probably about as divisive as the subject matter is (esp. in today's political climate).

http://www.amazon.com/Spitting-Image-Memory-Legacy-Vietnam/dp/0814751474

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/04/30/debunking_a_spitting_image/

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/press_box/2007/01/newsweek_throws_the_spitter.html

The story could largely be a myth.