I may have to pick up this book. The link above to the author's comments show a well-thought out discourse on how modern myth can shape our impressions of reality.

Since I spent the end of the war in diapers, I found his remarks about Hollywood having shaped the images of war particularly appropriate. I have no real first-hand experience with the effects of the war. I was brought up with the idea that the vets were universally hated and reviled, and even though I've never seen specific proof or talked to a single person who felt so, I honestly have never questioned it. (The Vietnamese involved, of course, were never discussed.) And I guess my mental image of a Vietnam vet really *is* Forrest Gump and the crazy pilot in Independance Day, even if logically I understand that these are just stereotypes.

I think the wide range of experiences recounted above show that vets did not all have the same homecoming experience and were not universally reviled... and yet the spitting image is so powerful, it lingers.

Then again, the only place I've ever seen someone spit on another person is in a movie.