Spitting on Veterans -- The Persistence of a Myth

When I got back from Vietnam, no one spat on me. No one spat on any of my friends. I've asked a lot of my fellow veterans and no one spat on them, either.

In fact, no one has been able to come up with one single documented contemporary account or photograph of any Vietnam veteran being spat on by war protesters when he returned from Vietnam. And yet this myth, more than any other save those surrounding "Hanoi Jane", has grown legs sufficient enough to have now become an archetype of the whole Vietnam experience.

"Most Vietnam vets were spat on when they came back," Michael Smith stated flat-out, attempting to justifiy his actions after his arrest for spitting on Jane Fonda at a book signing. And that statement, as far as I can tell, went completely unquestioned, completely unchallenged by the MSM/SCLM.

I'm at a loss as to understand why this phenomenon is occurring. Even though, as I say, there is not one single documented case from those years, a Google search for the phrases "vietnam veterans" and "spit on" turns up 5,700 pages. And many of those pages appear to be latter-day testimonials from many of my fellow Vietnam vets, attesting to the fact they were, indeed, the recipient of unwanted saliva when they came through airports in LA, SFO, etc. And it was always airports. Not coffeeshops, not gas stations, not streetcorners. Airports. (See Jack Shafer's May 2000 column in Slate, Drooling on the Vietnam Vet for an excellent analysis.)

Sorry guys, but I am not buying it, and I'm sorry to see that you've jumped onto the victimization bandwagon. I'm sorry that you've bought into this whole mythology of the poor persecuted Vietnam veteran.

It seems to me that you don't realize what a fucking pussy this makes you look like. Are you really trying to tell everyone that you were just back in The World from a year in the jungle and when some long-haired patchouli-reeking draft-dodging hippie freak comes up to you in the airport, calls you a baby-killer and spits on you, you did absolutely nothing about it???

Bullshit. If that really happened, then you'd still to this day be so fucking humiliated by what a pussy you were that you'd never, ever talk about it.

No, you would have kicked his ass but good, and that would be your story today. About 90% of your fellow Vietnam vets would have done the same thing, and yet there are no arrest records from those days that show that a Vietnam vet and a war protester got into a fight over some spit.

So if we are going to believe that it really did happen "all the time", then we have to believe that the spitting protesters were just so fucking extremely lucky to have targeted some poor wimpy chickenshit turn-the-other-cheek Chaplain's Assistant every single time. And that you were one of them.

Jesus, dude, if you're gonna tell some bullshit war story, you might want to think through the ramifications first: Tell a story that's gonna make you look good, not one that makes you look like a chickenshit wimpass dork.