VLVL-related: another _The Spitting Image_ book review

[Doug Millison]

We enjoyed some discussion of this book, _The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory,
and the Legacy of Vietnam_, by  Jerry Lembcke, when it was reviewed
somewhere a while back. His thesis seems to relate to the way Vineland
shows the counter-culture myth that was fabricated by the forces of
reaction and used for repressive purposes (Zoyd gives us a good example).
Here's another review of the book:

http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=25959912809618


Excerpt:

"Etched into the memories of most Americans of an age to remember the 1960s
is the poor treatment accorded returning Vietnam veterans. One recalls
those returning veterans as being reviled, called names, even spit upon.
There is one  problem with those memories, according to Lembcke: Such
treatment never  happened.

"Lembcke, a sociologist and a Vietnam veteran himself, has written a very
serious book challenging the widely-held belief that Vietnam veterans were
spit upon by anti-war activists when the veterans returned to the United
States. His thesis is that such spitting incidents are part of a modern
myth, used initially by the Nixon Administration as means to separate
"good" veterans from the Vietnam Veterans   Against the War and later by
the Bush Administration to discredit opposition during  the Gulf War. And,
in between those two periods, the myth was perpetuated by  motion pictures,
which seized upon this myth as a dramatic device. " [snip]



D O U G  M I L L I S O N  [http://www.online-journalist.com]
"All these voices. Why not pluck a few words from the multitudes rushing
toward the Void of forgetfulness?"--Thomas Pynchon