AtDTDA 32: Fantasia on a Fantasia of Thomas Tallis Pt. 1

[kelber at mindspring.com]

The movie Best Years of Our Lives (1946) won the Best Picture Oscar -- it's portrayal of the dislocation of returning WWII vets must have struck a chord with people.  Of course, there's no need for hippies to spit on returning Iraq War vets -- the VA seems to be doing a good enough job spitting on them.


Laura
-----Original Message-----
>From: Monte Davis <monte.davis at verizon.net>
>Sent: May 10, 2008 9:10 AM
>To: kelber at mindspring.com, pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: RE: AtDTDA 32: Fantasia on a Fantasia of Thomas Tallis Pt. 1
>
>Laura sez:
>
>>  We never spat at returning vets...
>
>As far as research can determine, neither did anyone else:
>
>http://www.amazon.com/Spitting-Image-Memory-Legacy-Vietnam/dp/0814751474/ref
>=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210424409&sr=8-1
>
>Except: "the only documented instances show members of the VFW and American
>Legion spitting on their less successful Vietnam peers" [in VVAW]
>
>The bulk of the "vets were scorned and abused" meme comes from several
>decades of "stab in the back" propaganda aimed at rewriting history to show
>that we had victory in our grasp before the America-hating hippies and news
>media snatched it away.
>
>(By the same token, the "every WWII vet basked in parades and settled
>happily into the American Century" was a back-projection; there were quite a
>lot of mostly noir-ish books and movies in the late 1940s about those who
>couldn't readjust.) 
>
>