Spitting Image ...

Protest Focuses on Iraq Troop Increase (January 27, 2007)

There were a few tense moments, however, including an encounter involving Joshua Sparling, 25, who was on crutches and who said he was a corporal with the 82nd Airborne Division and lost his right leg below the knee in Ramadi, Iraq. Mr. Sparling spoke at a smaller rally held earlier in the day at the United States Navy Memorial, and voiced his support for the administration’s policies in Iraq.

Later, as antiwar protesters passed where he and his group were standing, words were exchanged and one of the antiwar protestors spit at the ground near Mr. Sparling; he spit back.

Delmar Pickett Jr. Stands by His Spit Story (March 7, 2007)

Pickett's personal history challenges the work of Jerry Lembcke, the author of the 1998 book Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam, who holds that the spat-upon-vet story is an "urban myth" that took root in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It also challenges the half-dozen columns I've written since 2000 in support of Lembcke's thesis.

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Life imitating myth, or life imitating history? The Dec. 8, 2006, Post-Standard in Syracuse, N.Y., reports that a Lauren Maggi spat in the face of soldiers without provocation at the local airport.