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.

Spitting At Vets: Here's Why It Never Happened?

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- Here's how one professor (and miltary vet) explains why our culture is awash in mythical spitting tales. The author is cited by many -- including some bloggers in Cincinnati -- as the chief debunker:

"The element of spit in the coming-home stories of veterans who feel betrayed reveals a binary, man-nature dichotomy that lies at the heart of our understandings of human existence. When and how did mankind separate from nature? The answers are provided by creation myths that entail stories about the emergence of mankind from the sea. The prominence of water in creation stories correlates with the scientific understanding that human life emerged from aquatic life, but its psychological origin may have derived from the experience of biological birthing in which life emerges out of the amniotic fluid of the mother. Subconsciously, the individual feels a primal connection with the warmth and dampness of that in utero existence, and perhaps even desires to return to it, while consciously recognizing that life itself depends upon successful separation from the safety and comfort of that watery world.

"Whatever its origin, the belief that human existence begins with its separation from water is accompanied by fears of an involuntary return to it. We find these fears reflected in stories of a great deluge that sometimes appear in conjunction with creation stories. The idiom of wetness in myth is also gendered in ways that help us understand why the stories of spat-upon veterans frequently tell of women or girls doing the spitting. From the age of Enlightenment, Western culture has emphasized a link between women and nature. Rationality, the sine qua non of humanity, was understood by Enlightenment philosophers to be an attribute of the male, emotionality, of the female. The control of women became representative of the control of nature, and with their equation to nature, women became the object of oppression. The "naturizing" of women was followed by their sexualizing. Seventeenth-century writers valued women for their erotic physiognomy, especially their breasts and vaginas. But the ambiguity inherent in humankind's post-aquatic existence was paralleled by the male's ambivalence toward women: revered for her life-giving powers, the female simultaneously beckoned the male to return to its folds and threatened to reengulf the life that had emerged from it. As Barbara Ehrenreich wrote in the introduction to Theweleit's Male Fantasies:

"'The dread arises in the pre-Oedipal struggle of the fledgling self, before there is even an ego to sort out the objects of desire and the odds of getting them: It is a dread, ultimately of dissolution—of being swallowed, engulfed, annihilated. Women's bodies are the holes, swamps, pits of muck that can engulf.'

"It is this misogynous equation of women—nature, sexuality, wetness, engulfment, deeply etched in our culture, that is the basis for the myth of women spitting on defeated soldiers."

The entire paper that challenges spitting stories is
HERE. It is well worth reading.

Anti-War March In DC: Protestor Spits At Vet

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- Will this single overheated moment seriously harm the anti-war movement? An Iraq War veteran who lost his right leg below the knee at Ramadi was heckling the large throngs of anti-war protesters marching Saturday in Washington. Apparently, things got boisterous and somebody spit towards the soldier, Joshua Sparling, who spit right back.

Today, reports of the incident are spreading rapidly among veterans groups because it conjures up ugly memories of the Vietnam era, when servicemen often were targets for verbal abuse and worse. [Ed Note: I was spit at in New Orleans in 1970 while in Army uniform on leave from Fort Polk, La. It landed near my shoulder, and was horrifying to a kid who had answered his draft notice. I was in the military because I had drawn No. 56 in the December 1969 draft lottery, the only lottery I ever won.]

Lest anybody think the spitting incident Saturday is Internet fiction, there is this account from Sunday's New York Times (page 20 National Edition), whose reporter Ian Urbina seems to have been a witness:

"There were a few tense moments, however, including an encounter involving Joshua Sparling, 25, who was on crutches and who said he was a corporal with the 82nd Airborne Division and lost his right leg below the knee in Ramadi, Iraq. Mr. Sparling, who was not scheduled to speak, addressed the counterprotesters to voice his support for the administration's policies in Iraq.

Later, an antiwar protester passed where he and his group were standing, words were exchanged and one of the antiwar protestors spit at the ground near Mr. Sparling; he spit back.

"Capital police made the antiwar protestors walk farther away from the counterprotesters.

"'These are not Americans as far as I'm concerned,' Mr. Sparling
said."

I think the anti-war spitter was an incredible fool. Sparling had a right to express his opinion. I am no fan of President George W. Bush and his war policies. I will apologize to Corporal Sparling for what happened. And I salute his service and his sacrifice.