Debunking The Denials

Jim Lindgren, writing at the Volokh Conspiracy, has done a masterful dismantling of the denial by the left and by an often quoted academic, Jerry Lembcke, that Vietnam-era veterans or servicemen were spat upon by anti-war protesters. Lindgren has found numerous contemporary news accounts of incidents without having to dig all that hard.

I have been looking into these and other claims by Lembcke and they appear to hold about as much water as do his notions about a primal (wet) unconscious.

It is surprising that, without his having done an exhaustive review of published sources in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Lembcke would manufacture such a speculative argument, essentially treating hundreds of eyewitnesses as victims of “false memory” (at best).

+++++++

EVIDENCE:

Contrary to Lembcke’s claims, I quite easily found many accounts published in the 1967-1972 period claiming spitting on servicemen.

For example, on October 6, 1967, John F. Geyer and Bill Bowers, two sailors in uniform on a ten-day leave before shipping out, were accosted and taunted by a group of about ten young men while leaving a high-school football game in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Bowers heard one of them say, “We’re going to get a couple of sailors.” Then one of the band of attackers spat at Geyer, hitting both Geyer and Bowers. Geyer, who was a former high-school football lineman, swung at his attacker. The attacker then stabbed Geyer in the side with a knife. After two hospital stays, Geyer fully recovered. In January and February, 1968, Geyer’s 18-year-old attacker was prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to a reformatory. All this is laid out in a series of stories in the local newspaper, the Bucks County Courier Times.

This was one of many stories published in American newspapers in the late 1960s and early 1970s in which American servicemen were spat on by citizens or anti-war protesters or the opposite: pro-war servicemen or citizens were spat on by anti-war protesters. (Because Lembcke recognizes the existence of the stories of people spitting on protesters, I'll leave that substantial body of evidence out of this post.)

Believe me, there is a lot more over there. Take a blood pressure pill before reading it all though. It is pretty hard to take in a massive dose like that. Lembcke apparently based his "work" on electronic records. That will be a problem in the future for researchers who don't get off their computers to find original source material. Anyone want to be that Lembcke will not apologize or retract his work? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

UPDATE: Others: Polimom, "poot!". Jawa Report (Good Lt.): Score: one to nothing. Brainster: Great job, Lindgren.