Myth, myth! (Yes?)

File under "if you repeat it enough times, and have Oliver Stone film a fictional instance, people will start to believe it":

...The story quotes Ted Sampley, a Green Beret in Vietnam whose web site has led the charge for some veterans against Kerry. Sampley says, "I truly believe that John Kerry's testimony before Congress [against the Vietnam War] had a big role in people who were supposedly peaceniks spitting on vets and calling them baby killers when they got home."

There are two problems with Sampley's "belief" as reported by the Plain Dealer. First, guilt by association is always a weak argument, and more likely a smear tactic that is unfair to the subject. America has learned this before, during the Palmer Raids of WWI, the McCarthyism of the Cold War, and now during the Ashcroft era of the War on Terror and the Patriot Act.

More important, however, is that the charge is simply not rooted in reality. It is both unfair to Senator Kerry and to the Vietnam-era peace movement. The fact is, there is absolutely no record of any peace activist taunting or spitting upon returning veterans. It is myth, and like most myths it is hard to dislodge.

In 1995 sociologist Thomas Beamish and his colleagues analyzed all peace movement-related stories from 1965 - 1971 in the NY Times, LA Times, and SF Chronicle (495 stories). They found no instance of any spitting on returned troops by peace movement members, nor any taunting. Indeed, they found few examples of negative demonstrations involving returning troops of any kind, or even of simple disapproval of returning soldiers. Three years later, sociologist Jerry Lembcke conducted a similarly exhaustive study for his book, The Spitting Image, with like results. He discovered war protesters being spat upon by war supporters, and hostile acts toward Vietnam veterans by conservative, pro-war groups like the VFW, but no taunting or spitting on returned veterans by peace movement members. Returned veterans and in-service GIs were welcomed in the peace movement, and many assumed leadership roles. Yet the myth endures...