Roasted On A Vietnam Spit: 'Urban Myth' Prof's Urban Miss

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- Slate's Jack Shafer this week distanced himself from the contention soldiers in military uniforms were never spat upon by U.S. civilians during the years Americans were deeply divided over the Vietnam War. Shafer found a vet and believes his story from 1971.

The Slate columnist has long based his skepticism about spitting incidents on the research of Jerry Lembcke, a College of the Holy Cross professor who likens spitting stories to urban legends. Lembcke is a Vietnam vet who became active in the anti-war movement after coming home. He contends the myth took hold in popular culture several years after Saigon fell.

Shafer made contact with Delmar Pickett Jr. , a Vietnam vet from Kansas who was interviewed by CBS TV newsman Morton Dean. Pickett told CBS he was spat upon at the Seattle airport while in uniform -- a story he repeated for Shafer last week. The CBS broadcast aired on Dec. 27, 1971, before the war ended, and long before the professor published his research casting doubt on accounts of spitting.

"Pickett's personal history challenges the work of Jerry Lembcke, the author of the 1998 book Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam, who holds the spat-upon-vet story is an 'urban myth' that took root in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It also challenges the half-dozen columns I've written in support of Lembcke's thesis."

That's Shafer, who added the spitting stories had "greater currency in those early years than Lembcke allows." He was respectful of Pickett, who recalled some of the details, but not all, because the passage of time had influenced his memory a bit. Said Shafer:

"I have no reason to believe Pickett is lying, even if his two recountings of that day in 1971 don't match up perfectly. I'm no human lie detector, but his telephone manner seemed remarkably relaxed and candid for somebody getting a call from the press out of the blue. What argues in favor of Pickett's claim over say, Minarik's (another vet from the era), is that a document shows that he made it in the year in happened. And unlike Minarik, he's not making any political hay with it. It's just one soldier's story."

Anyhow, Pickett put it best about rooting around memory banks and recapturing what it was like to live through a time when the nation was more sharply split than today over the prosecution of an unpopular war.

"Memory tends to blur. Things you think happened didn't. Things you think didn't, did. Time softens everything."

H/T BizzyBloglog and the proprietor, Tom Blumer, for passing along Shafer's follow up in Slate.

Vietnam-era Spitting: Scientists Say It Happened

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- There is an obscure corner of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs that studies and conducts research into the psychological traumas combat and war can inflict on soldiers. The organization is called the National Center for PTSD, the acronym for post traumatic stress disorder. It publishes mental health medical data that is "accurate, empirically-driven, truly authoritative" for the scientific community across the globe.

The research is conducted by agencies like the VA, the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health, major universities and international organizations. Recently, it released a report about PTSD, American Indians and native Hawaiians who served in Vietnam. The project was designed to evaluate their homecoming and readjustment experiences. It is entitled "The legacy of psychological trauma from the Vietnam War for American Indian Military Personnel." And it reports that spitting occurred.

Here is a passage from an American Indian vet describing his homecoming:

"I was spit on and called a baby-killer in the mainstream culture when I first came home, and no way would any college accept me or any good job would be open to me. I felt too ashamed and enraged to accept the love my family and community showed me."

Now, if the mental health community were not largely in consensus that spitting took place, would that passage ever have been published by a respected research organization?

Spitting deniers are beginning to box themselves in like the environmentally-challenged extremists who refuse to budge from their contention global warming is an over-hyped myth. Extremists won't accept any research that challenges their small-minded opinions. They are flat Earthers. Are they prepared to say the National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder fabricated an "urban myth" spitting incident to circulate across the world on the Internet?

The full text of the REPORT is a fact sheet for mental health professionals and families about the aftereffects of war on Native Americans in our nation. And there is information about the National Center for PTSD HERE. The director, Matthew J. Friedman, is a medical doctor who also holds a Ph.D. and he says the center's work is "fortified by our collaborations, research and clinical and consultation experience."

[UPDATE: 1:52 p.m.: BizzyBlog.com, an Ohio blogger, has been busy compiling spitting stories from across the United States. He's come to the conclusion that homecoming veterans were indeed spat upon during the troubled Vietnam War era, and is scoffing at the "urban myth" camp. The Bizzy work is well worth examining.]

From 1971 CBS Newscast: Vietnam Vet Was Spit At

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- The old CBS Evening News show watched by millions of American when Walter Cronkie was in the anchor chair always closed the nightly broadcast with his trademark signoff, "And that's the way it is . . " Cronkite was gone -- probably on holiday -- when a story appeared on the network's national newscast two days after Christmas 1971. Charles Collingwood was subbing 36 years ago.

Collingwood introduced a piece about a Vietnam vet from a small town in Kansas. He had come home to a nation divided about the war in Southeast Asia.

The vet told CBS Correspondent Morton Dean he was spit upon in Seattle, and Dean put it on the air for millions to see. The story ran for nearly six minutes, a huge chunk of airtime in a 20-minute news window. The Monday, December 27, 1971, broadcast is in the Television News Archive at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. A summary of the story from the archive is HERE.

Why bring this up now? In recent days, some people have contended reports of such spitting incidents were urban myths. They say the myth seems to have started in the early 1980s, perhaps around the time of Sylvester Stallone's Rambo movie. They suggest that the recollections of spitting incidents are fabrications, or false memories.

Much of what they say is based upon the work of a professor at the College of the Holy Cross. In 1999 (see post immediately below) Jerry Lembcke authored a book based on his research that shows spitting incidents seem to be absent from media accounts during the years the Vietnam War was being fought.

But the newscast in the Vanderbilt archives appears to be clearly at odds with Lembcke's urban myth thesis. Ohio blogger Tom Blumer at Bizzyblog.com posted the archive's abstract about the 1971 newscast segment Sunday. (This blog was trying without success to track down the subject of the story, a medic who was one of 2.5 million Vietnam vets at the time of the 1971 CBS report.)

The medic who was the subject of the story went back to college from a small community in rural Kansas. He was described as a hero.

Let's all hope that life has gone well for him.

Spitting Myth Prof's School: Yes, The Spit Flew

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- A red-hot debate is swirling on the Internet and talk shows about the Vietnam-era recollections of veterans who say they were spat upon. Some dismiss the spitting as urban myth, and they often cite College of the Holy Cross professor Jerry Lembcke as the chief debunker. His 1998 book, The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Vietnam, published by New York University Press is the research work they often rely upon.

But the 2,700-student Jesuit university in Worcester, Mass., where Lembcke is employed, isn't totally sold on the idea that the spit never flew. In fact, it has said publicly that Holy Cross graduates were targets.

In April 1999, the school's official publication, Holy Cross Magazine, did a Vietnam retrospective and named two alums who were spit upon. The article is called "The War That Never Ended." One of the Holy Cross alums, Steve Bowen, is a 1965 graduate. He recalled it happened to him in Los Angeles and the spit landed on the front of his shirt. "She was so good looking, I just laughed," Bowen was quoted as saying about the incident.

And there was a lot about Jim MacDougald, a 1951 Holy Cross alum who also recalled being spit upon. MacDougald, with five kids, rose to the rank of Air Force colonel before retiring. Holy Cross published their stories and there is no evidence it suspects they made them up or lied. In fact, they are still available for all the world to view on the college's online portal.

Lembcke, too, is in the same Vietnam retrospective. He doesn't deny that vets were treated badly, and he doesn't deny that spitting took place.

"Many veterans have responded to my book with gratitude that I have set the story straight. Others have challenged my thesis, claiming to have been treated badly when they returned from war. Few of the latter stories, however, lend validity to the myth that it was anti-war activists who were hostile to vets," Lembcke said in the Holy Cross alumni mag article in April 1999. "Upon questioning, vets will often concede the hostility came from older veterans, the Veteran's Administration hospital, or simply a drunk in a bar. The historical fact is that the peace movement saw veterans as potential allies and reached out to them."

The feature article from the same April 1999 issue about the two Holy Cross alums who said they were spit at is HERE.

And Lembcke, a Vietnam vet who became active in the peace movement, is HERE. The stories were published seven years ago, long before the current Iraq war, long before the current anti-war movement existed, and long before the current flap exploded, fanned by some people who claim that those who remember spitting stories from decades past are fabricators.