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The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam Paperback – May 1, 2000

4.1 out of 5 stars 69

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How the startling image of an anti-war protested spitting on a uniformed veteran misrepresented the narrative of Vietnam War political debate

One of the most resilient images of the Vietnam era is that of the anti-war protester ― often a woman ― spitting on the uniformed veteran just off the plane. The lingering potency of this icon was evident during the Gulf War, when war supporters invoked it to discredit their opposition.

In this startling book, Jerry Lembcke demonstrates that not a single incident of this sort has been convincingly documented. Rather, the anti-war Left saw in veterans a natural ally, and the relationship between anti-war forces and most veterans was defined by mutual support. Indeed one soldier wrote angrily to Vice President Spiro Agnew that the only Americans who seemed concerned about the soldier's welfare were the anti-war activists.

While the veterans were sometimes made to feel uncomfortable about their service, this sense of unease was, Lembcke argues, more often rooted in the political practices of the Right. Tracing a range of conflicts in the twentieth century, the book illustrates how regimes engaged in unpopular conflicts often vilify their domestic opponents for "stabbing the boys in the back."

Concluding with an account of the powerful role played by Hollywood in cementing the myth of the betrayed veteran through such films as
Coming Home, Taxi Driver, and Rambo, Jerry Lembcke's book stands as one of the most important, original, and controversial works of cultural history in recent years.


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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Well-argued and documented" ― Berkshire Eagle

"The image is ingrained: A Vietnam veteran, arriving home from the war, gets off a plane only to be greeted by an angry mob of antiwar protesters yelling, 'Murderer!' and 'Baby killer!' Then out of the crowd comes someone who spits in the veteran's face. The only problem, according to Jerry Lembcke, is that no such incident ever has been documented. It is instead, says Lembcke, a kind of urban myth that reflects our lingering national confusion over the war." ―
Los Angeles Times

"The best history I have seen on the impact of the war on Americans, both then and now." -- David Dellinger

"The myth of the spat-upon veteran is not only bad history, but it has been instrumental in selling the American public on bad policy." -- Maurice Isserman ―
Chicago Tribune

"Lembcke builds a compelling case against collective memory by demonstrating that remembrances of Vietnam were almost at direct odds with circumstantial evidence." ―
San Francisco Chronicle

About the Author

Jerry Lembcke grew up in Northwest Iowa. He was drafted in 1968 and served as a Chaplain’s Assistant in Vietnam. He is the author of eight books including The Spitting Image, CNN’s Tailwind Tail, and Hanoi Jane. His opinion pieces have appeared in The New York Times, Boston Globe, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. He is presently Associate Professor of Sociology, Emeritus, at Holy Cross College and Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ NYU Press (May 1, 2000)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 217 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0814751474
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0814751473
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.13 x 0.6 x 9.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.1 out of 5 stars 69

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Customer reviews

4.1 out of 5 stars
4.1 out of 5
69 global ratings
Disrespectful to Vietnam Veterans
1 Star
Disrespectful to Vietnam Veterans
I am a Green Beret combat veteran who served in SE Asia in '69-'70.I returned to my hometown on a Greyhound bus. Dressed in my uniform, departing the vehicle I was confronted by a group of six people who came up in my face and called me a 'baby killer'...Went to the VA for medical help and was called a 'crybaby' and forcibly removed from the building. (The VA's orchestrated disrespect to all Vietnam Veterans resulted in tens of thousands suicides)Several times in applying for a job I was told Vietnam Vets were 'losers' and denied employment..I became a Veterans Advocate and for ten years worked in Federal Law (USC Title 38 and CFR 38). I legally assisted hundreds of Veterans in their claims against the VA.This author uses his extremely limited exposure to a handful of close personal anecdotes (there were nearly three million veterans who served) to try and constitute a poorly written attempt at 'his' truth. The author's bias in wanting to prove his premise with assumptions based on his 'belief' is ridiculously weak. His greatest success is in disrespecting Vietnam Veterans. The author is a non-combatant who pretends to be 'informed' about the Vietnam experience. Sophomoric writing.In the book 'Soldier's Heart: An Inspirational Memoir and Inquiry of War' learn about the history of what is called PTSD, how Veterans were treated by society, how they fought the gov't, struggled to be accepted, be immersed in a 'therapy' (rap) group, and FEEL what the 'history' was....The author and his ilk are in denial. I couldn't finish the poorly written work.
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Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2014
This is a book that should have been made into a documentary and required read by all high school students as a reference to the Vietnam War. As a Vietnam vet that lived in the Oakland Calif. area where returning vets passed to Vietnam and returned home, and with plenty of friends that served I was never spit on when returning home. I never had any friends that were spit on, nor did I or anyone else that I knew that ever had but always heard these stories about it. All I ever recall was peace protests with War Protestors protesting the war, NEVER the returning soldiers. This is an EXCELLENT book to see how Nixon tried to turn the tables on the protestors by making them out to be the bad people and later how Bush 1 turned the tables in the Gulf War against those protesting that war. This should be a reference for EVERY Vietnam vet. Of all the press coverage of war protestors against the Vietnam war the only truly documentation of anyone spitting on veterans was the pro-war spitting on WW2 and Korean vets protesting the Vietnam War.. Excellent book with everything documented with facts...
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Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2022
The author is a Vietnam vet and a participant in the movement to bring the troops home during the '60's and '70's. He marshals a bunch of detailed research to show that there were no verifiable records of peace demonstrators spitting on returning service people during the Vietnam era - and that the spitting was a carefully crafted propaganda tool of several succeeding administrations in advancing war policies and defusing anti-war sentiment. Essential reading for anyone who wants to get out ahead of manipulative propaganda campaigns.
Reviewed in the United States on September 23, 2013
It is a most appropriate portion of the sub-title. And a subject that has long-concerned me. Jerry Lembcke compares the development of myths surrounding the Vietnam War with the similar experiences in other countries, and in particular, the "stab in the back" myths that developed in Germany after World War I as well as in France, when it too "lost" Indochina. One that he did not mention, and has always been my favorite, is reported in Barbara Tuckman's  The Guns of August: The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Classic About the Outbreak of World War I  which concerns the first month of World War I. The British Army was being overwhelmed by the German Army, with its "limitless manpower," in northern France. A national myth quickly developed in Britain that the Russian Army was passing through the country to reinforce the Western Front. "Everyone" knew it; everyone could cite the evidence: the Duke who saw 40,000 Russians marching across his estate at night; the porter in Edinburgh who had swept up the snow from their boots off the train platform (yes, in August!... but hey, that's Russians for you), and the naval battle at Heligoland Blight was fought to "protect the Russian convoys." None of it, of course, was true. A myth though, to fit a desperate national need.

And it is through the prism of that Russians-crossing-England that I view the spitting myth, and yes, it is a myth. It did not happen. Certainly it did not happen to me, when I returned in late August, 1969. And I do not believe it happened to anyone else either, in particular, as the myth has it, a hippie in the San Francisco airport. But as Lembcke is careful to point out, and I fully concur, it is impossible to prove a negative. Both he and I would concede that somewhere, somehow, some returning soldier may have been called a "baby-killer" and even, still less likely, but possibly, spit upon. And Lembcke provides the central argument to buttress his assertions: at the time, there were no reports that this occurred. At least one other reviewer has performed this simple thought experiment, similar to Lembcke' argument, consider: young males, and it was all males back then, having endured a year in Vietnam, that, at a minimum, took off some of the "civilizing edges," usually with thoughts of real or potential girl friends, gets off the plane, and the first thing that happens is a long-haired, and therefore "effete" hippie, spits on you. I consider myself on the "pacific" side of the temperament scale, but I would have decked the guy. How many others, less pacific, would have done the same thing? It could easily have erupted into a brawl, with bystanders participating, the police intervene, court charges, etc. As Lembcke carefully documents in Chapter 3, both Nixon, but particularly Spiro Agnew, the Vice-President, were vociferous in their denunciations of the peace movement, with real, and all too often, imaginary charges. SURELY, Agnew would have used even one incident of spitting, and named names, to discredit the peace movement. It didn't happen.

Lembcke convincing demonstrates how and from where the "spitting myth" evolved, pointing particularly at the 1978 movie 
Coming Home , most ironically featuring Jane Fonda. Yes, a re-write of history, fitting national needs, coming from Hollywood. He also details how the treatment of returning veterans was a prominent part of the Bush I strategy during the 1990-91 Gulf War. So, why do numerous individuals claim that they had been spit on? Lembcke also convincingly, in my opinion, since it is also one of my "pet peeves," details that many individuals claim they were in the military, and never were (certainly one of the reasons subsequent to this book, that the "Stolen Valor Act" became law in 2006). And even for those who were in the military, many were never in Vietnam, and for those that were, most were not truly in combat, but were cooks, clerk-typists, etc., who might have been killed via a rocket attack, but there chances of surviving their tour were magnitudes greater that the "grunt" walking point. The author says, on p.117, "The reality is that 85 percent of the men who went to Vietnam did not see combat." I believe the percentage a bit lower, 75 percent, but still, we agree that it was the majority. Essentially the same point is made by Philip Beidler in his excellent book  Late Thoughts on an Old War: The Legacy of Vietnam  starting on page 134. From my own experience, I'd estimate that I've (briefly!) talked to 20-25 individuals who would claim they were in Vietnam, but the simple question: "Oh, what unit were you in?" would lead to a quick back-peddle, and a discussion about the weather.

Of personal interest, the author tells the story of Dwight H. Johnson, who won the Medal of Honor for actions taken near Dak To, when five tanks were ambushed, in Jan. 1968, and who was subsequently killed in Detroit, attempting to rob a store, in 1971. Dwight was in my battalion, the 1/69th Armor, though I did not know him. He "DEROSed" two months before my arrival in September, '68. The author postulates that Johnson was one of the first who commenced the image that all Vietnam veterans had PTSD, in his chapter "From Badness to Madness."

It is depressing noting all the 1-star reviews, all of which I have read. It is reflective of the "civil war" that still divides Vietnam veterans, some 40 plus years later, the one between those who have realized it was a tragic mistake, and those who continue to have seen some sort of purpose to it. What most of us could agree upon is that we were spit upon, metaphorically. Unmentioned in Lembcke's account is Agent Orange, and how the US government argued for many years that there were no deleterious effects, which culminated in the truly outrageous "settlement" imposed by Federal Judge Julius Weinstein that said that $12,000, spread over 10 years, was a "fair and just" settlement for those affected. And asking a man to be the last soldier to die for a mistake, what is that?

I really wanted to give this book a 5-star rating since it addresses a heart-felt issue. However, I think it is marred by redundancy and disorganization. And the chapter "Women, Wetness, and Warrior Dreams" got WAY too "new-age" for me. The author gave short-shift to the movie I've always considered to be the classic movie on the war, 
Hearts and Minds (The Criterion Collection)  which he calls "scholarly." Also, as mentioned above, there was the "metaphorical" spitting that he neglected, by individuals in our own government, certainly, op cit., Nixon and Agnew, but such that it continues to the present day. 4-stars.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 17, 2015
I had heard about this book for a long time as I am a college professor specializing in military history. So after the issue of Vietnam vets and their treatment was raised in my class I decided to finally read the book and form my own opinion. While it raises some good points about the power of myth and popular culture in American society, the book as a whole is extremely weak. It is written exclusively from the perspective of someone with a liberal agenda who wants to prove that his experience was the norm and that people like John Kerry somehow represent the quintessential Vietnam veteran. As a historian it's shocking to see the lack of evidence in here and the vague generalizations that the author asserts as facts. The research is shoddy and the conclusions are questionable. It's depressing that an academic press actually published this tripe and every historian I have talked to about it (including those with very liberal political views) agree that they would never use it in a class because it is such a poor example of scholarship. In defense of the author, he is not a historian. But don't go into this book thinking it's history. It is a polemic and the author seems more concerned with attacking the first Bush administration for the Gulf War than in truly illuminating something useful about the memories of Vietnam. In short, we still need a good book to address those issues.
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Reviewed in the United States on April 3, 2018
A number of reviewers have ben quite critical of the author's scholarship but I beg to differ. I believe he is quite persuasive. He notes that trying to find records of specific incidents of veterans being sit on or similar is difficult to say the least. My own personal experience was positive; no one disrespected me and many were quite kind. After I turned against the war I found the antiwar people to be some of the most decent of all. I realize my experience is just that; mine and other ad differing experiences. The worse were the American Legion/VFW types who called us losers, said Vietnam not a "real" war and so forth.
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