For years now, the leftists have tried to claim that all of the stories of Vietnam Veterans returning home and being spit on were just urban legends. A few years back, some uber-leftist apoligist authored a book claiming that he could find absolutely no evidence of spitting on vets happening. None.
Some dingbat at Slate named Jack Shafer recently wrote an article there which he supposed would be used as something “Definitive” that leftist and their apologists could use on this here interweb to quickly dispel anyone who brought it up.
The trouble is, both Shafer and the author of the book from a few years back were wrong. Or too stupid to do any research.
First, Dan Reihl busted their urban-legend-busting myth with a number of direct links at Reihl World View.
Having seen how easily Reihl was able to find these, Jim Lindgren of The Volokh Conspiracy did a search, and came up with oodles more evidence that, YES, multiple Vietnam Veterans were spit on when they returned to the US.
This still isn’t enough for most leftist apologists, and especially not enough for Jack Shafer, and he placed an order in to have the goalposts moved back. To characterize his response best, I think would have to involve quoting Ace of the AoSHQ
Original Claim: There are no contemporaneous journalistic reports backing up the “urban legend” of Vets being spat upon
Revised Claim, now that such contemporaneous reports have been produced: There are no court documents proving the Vets who made these charges were not simply flat-out lying
Jack Shafer, you’re an asshole. You lied (or were too ignorant to tell the truth, which is the same thing) and you got stepping on your dick.
Go crawl back into whatever hole you scrambled out of and go nurse your intellectual bruises. In the meantime, don’t even try to call yourself a journalist, or a researcher, or even a decent human being.
And to the rest of the apologists for the gobbers back in 1966-1974
