You probably think I mean the myth that real soldiers got "spat upon by hippies" don't you? Well, I was a semi-real soldier (or would that be a real, semi-soldier, since I was in the USAF) who was stationed in Northern California in the 70's, and spent much time in the great hippie bastion of San Francisco where I was treated....well, I really wasn't treated any particular way, generally I was either ignored or accepted after some conversation. Like "Do you like the new Quicksilver Messenger Service album or something like that. Hell I even stood in line on Thanksgiving '76 around winterland with the longhairs waiting to get into the Last Waltz and we all shared what we had....
No, the guy that got spat on wasn't a soldier for his country, he was a Soldier for Reagan. Now he is governor Tim Pawlenty, but back in the day he "passed out brochures for him [Reagan], on the West Bank of the University of Minnesota and got spat on by hippies"
Yeah, no shit, this daring cultural warrior (student) was on the front lines of the St. Paul cultural struggles and found himself on the West Bank (no not that one, the one in Minn.) with hippies all around him as he campaigned for St. Ronnie the Gooper fount of wisdom and strength. The dauntless Gov Pawlenty shared his story with the rest of the nations Gooper Govs and Morning Joe has the thrilling story of the courageous Gov here.
Now I don't doubt for one minute that legions of "hippies" were still extant scrambling around the University of Minn during the time of Governor Reagan's dash for history as he was carried by the millions of fresh-faced Tim Pawlentys struggling on though near drowned in hippie expectorations. I just wonder how the hippies had any saliva left after all the putative spit that was laid on the real soldiers. Maybe the passage of half a decade after the end of the war had revived them-or maybe we have another Joe the Plumber kind of guy in the Minn. state house. Maybe he didn't actually get spit upon.
This kind of shit makes me furious, a sissy prick like Tim Pawlenty trying to make a bullshit claim that he actually did something noble while he was getting his nearly free education-a process that is much less available now thanks to the goopers. Pawlenty tries to hitch his star to a myth that forms the foundations of much of the current mental confusion that surrounds the wars. The confusion is that we (the country, not the government, and primarily that means the republicans since Vietnam) treated our brothers and cousins and high school buddies badly when they returned from Vietnam. It didn't happen. They were not given many parades and most of them I knew wanted nothing to do with any celebration of the fiasco they had just seen. That is to be expected, they were just kids coming home, bringing with them all the ills of war and warriors. They came back with PTSD, they came back pissed at the war, they came back to the small towns in the midwest and introduced us to pot-thanks. They came back and formed the Vietnam Veterans against the War and they brought back some of the coolest stereo equipment we had seen. Over the years the stories changed, but those of us who were there remember that the most anti-war people around were those who had just had their noses rubbed in it. We loved our brothers, we walked with them, we cried with them and we NEVER ever spat upon them. Chickenhawks for Reagan, well.....
I never had much feeling about Tim Pawlenty before, but I detest him now.
(Cross-posted at DocuDharma)