Vietnam

[Jonathan Lighter]

Some time after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 I saw a news story (on FNC) in
which a soldier who was taking part in an antiwar protest was actually
spat at and called a coward by a middle-aged man, as the video seemed to
show.

Of course, the spitter in this case was *for* the war.

My guess is that some uniformed veterans, especially late in the Vietnam
war, were occasionally confronted by someone who spat on the ground.
Anything more forceful would have been very unwise.

Lembcke's book, cited by Mark, shows that the typical story of being "spat
on by longhaired hippies at the airport when my plane landed from Vietnam"
is doubtless a fantasy: protesters, if any, weren't allowed close enough.

BTW, as late as ca1997 I saw an SUV with a fresh-looking bumper sticker that
read, "Boycott Jane Fonda - Commie Bitch."

JL

On Sat, May 22, 2010 at 2:14 PM, Paul <paulzjoh at mtnhome.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Paul <paulzjoh at MTNHOME.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Vietnam
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> paul johnson
>
> Hear Hear!
>
> On 5/22/2010 1:09 PM, Bill Palmer wrote:
> > OK, pure conjecture here, but I'm wondering if the "poisonous atmosphere"
> > was more or less confined to university campuses, and the more widespread
> > incidence of it maybe more urban legend than anything.  Hazarding a guess
> > here, but I'm thinking many/most of the contributors to this list have
> > spent
> > a good deal of their lives on campus and might have been students or
> > young
> > faculty at the time
>
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