Truth or Fiction or Folklore?

RepublicanJen at her AOL Journal is still concerned over those stories of anti-Vietnam War protesters spitting on veterans, whether it happened or not: No Spitting on Soldiers, They Say? 09/23/04.

Now, I need to give RJ credit.  She's at least aware that others have claimed the whole thing is an urban legend.  Unlike, say, Chuckie, who just keeps repeating it because it feels good.  Or feels bad, in a good way, by Chuckie's standards.

But she's picking up on a story making the usual rounds in the Republican echo chamber, Drudge Report to Freeperdom, and on from there.  It'll probably be showing up in one of Dick Cheney's speeches in a couple of weeks. 

The story is about a young soldier on leave from duty in Iraq, at home in Ohio.  According to the one news report I've read on it, the one to which RJ links, he was attacked from behind by someone after a Toby Keith concert, who knocked him down and broke his nose and was yelling at him about soldiers.  The news report leads us to believe the attacker singled him out as a soldier because he was wearing a shirt with an "Operation Iraqi Freedom" logo.

The story is from a local NBC affiliate:  Decorated Soldier Reportedly Attacked At Concert nbc4i.com 09/21/04.

Foster Barton, 19, of Grove City, received a Purple Heart for his military service in Iraq. He almost lost his leg last month after a Humvee he was riding in ran over a landmine.

Barton said he was injured again Friday night in a crowded parking lot as he was leaving the Toby Keith concert at Germain Amphitheatre. The solider was injured so badly that he can't go back to Iraq as scheduled.

"I don't remember getting hit at all, really," said Barton, a member of the 1st Calvary Division. "He hit me in the back of the head. I fell and hit the ground. I was knocked unconscious and he continued to punch and kick me on the ground."

Barton and his family said he was beat up because he was wearing anIraqi freedom T-shirt.

"It's not our fault," Barton said. "I'm just doing a job."

According to a Columbus police report, six witnesses who didn't know Barton said the person who beat him up was screaming profanities and making crude remarks about U.S. soldiers, Burton reported.

Now, I'm mentioning this in my own post in part because I'm curious about the story.  If anyone comes across another story on this, please send me a link, or leave it in the comments.

Before proceeding, let me say what's pretty obvious at the moment to most people except those who use Fox News and Oxycontin radio as their window on the world: Americans who are against the Iraq War are not hostile to soldiers.  I say that with a high level of confidence, because I was present at two large antiwar protests in San Francisco before the invasion, and I've been following the news about the war fairly closely, including criticisms of it. 

People know that this war was George W. Bush's project, not the choice of the soldiers.  Some of them supported it, some of them didn't, and soldiers' opinions of it vary greatly.  (See, for instance, A strident minority: anti-Bush US troops in Iraq Christian Science Monitor 09/21/04.)

So, if this incident was as the Freepers are taking it, an antiwar type attacking a soldier because he's a soldier, it's certainly an aberrant instance.  Certainly, we have seen some striking displays of disrespect for our soldiers lately.  The "Purple Heart band-aids" that were popular items at the Repubican convention to mock wounded soldiers was one example.  So was this one I posted about earlier: Rumsfeld to servicepeople and their families: Stop whining, you wimps!  09/11/04.  "And indeed, if you watch in any conflict in our history, there have always been people who said, 'Why?  Why should we do that? Another loss of life.  Another person wounded.  Another limb off'," the Defense Secretary sneered.  These people really should show more respect for the men and women serving our country in uniform.

I posted this in the comments at RJ's post:
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As far as the historical issue of the "spitting on soldiers" folklore from the Vietnam War era, you may want to check out the work of Jerry Lembcke (a Vietnam veteran himself) who did extensive research on this particular tale for his book, The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam.

An article by him on the subject is available online at: http://www.rlg.org/annmtg/lembcke99.html

If you have to believe that antiwar protesters hate soldiers, you can just dismiss work like Lembcke's, of course.

The Freepers have been using this Foster Barton incident as an example of this kind of thing.  As you noted, it didn't involve spitting, although most people would take breaking his nose as a more serious type of assault.

And it may well be that this was some aberrant antiwar zealot who decided he was going to attack Barton because he was a soldier.  Since there were six witnesses, I would think there's a good chance the guy will be charged.  So it would be interesting to see if the guy's history actually justifies this interpretation.  Is the attacker an antiwar activist?  Did he have some personal grudge against the Barton? Was he a violent nut who hadn't been taking his meds?

It's also eye-catching that the incident occurred after a Toby Keith concert.  If you don't know, Keith has made a point of striking a jingoistic pose ever since 9/11.  It seems odd on the face of it that someone would be inspired by a Toby Keith concert to whack an off-duty soldier on the head.  But stranger things have happened.
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Now, I won't try to compete with the comma-dancing Freepers in analyzing this thing.  But the Lembcke book interested me for more than one reason.  It's a very good study of how a folklore tale moves from fantasy to conventional wisdom.

And it strikes me that this Foster Barton story could become an element is some later folklore concoction years from now.  Because it's gone out over the Freeper network,and has surely become part of a couple of million e-mail spam mailings already.  (But it's probably competing with the "Kerry and the Bible" one that I got two copies of yesterday.)  So even if the real story is something different, e.g., the attacker was in love with Barton's girlfriend or something, there are a lot of people who will remember "seeing it in the news" that a soldier on leave was brutally attacked by an antiwar protester.

Actually, my urban-folklore-detector involuntarily triggered when I saw the part about the Toby Keith concert.  The setting just seems an awfully unlikely place for someone who was passionately antiwar to show and assault someone because he thinks the target is a soldier.

So, if anyone hears more on this story, please pass the link along.

Oh, how does RepublicanJen link up the Foster Barton story to spitting on Vietnam veterans?

If the anti-war nuts are angry enough to beat this poor guy senseless, then the anti-war nuts of the 60s and 70s were capable of spitting on soldiers when they returned from Vietnam.

It must be kind of like the final result on Iraqi WMDs.  Saddam didn't have WMDs.  He had the intention to have programs to make WMDs.  So even if the protesters didn't spit on veterans, they must have thought about planning to spit on veterans.  It's pretty much the same thing, right?

And the moral of the story for RJ?

Just how vile can the anti-war/Bush/oil/capitalism crowd get?

Assuming the attacker was antiwar and anti-Bush, much less anti-oil and anti-capitalism, that is.  All it really says about the attacker in the article she linked is that he "was screaming profanities and making crude remarks about U.S. soldiers." But we can assume, I suppose, that he intented to consider becoming antiwar, anti-Bush, etc.

By the way, just what does "anti-oil" mean?  Oh, the mysteries, the mysteries...