Woodstock

[larryJ]

Charles, the thing to remember here is that television was just getting started.  I was 10 when we got our first TV and it was a 13" B/W in a metal cabinet, much like a microwave looks like, and in SE New Mexico, there were two stations, one in Roswell and one in Carlsbad.  The reception was terrible unless you had a really high antenna and the programming was on from about 2PM until 11PM.  I say all this because it was only 10 years later that Vietnam actually started.  Television had expanded rapidly and there was more national news than before.  Still not CNN standards, but on the evening news you could see and hear what was going on in the world.  The government and the media were agreed that reporters could go into the war zone and broadcast their reports to the world on television.  I think that the impact of actually seeing war on TV as opposed to hearing about it on the radio was a surprise to everyone.  I feel this caused more Americans to be against the war and the media picked up on their protest rallies and showed it to all of us.  Also, there was the footage of Americans who died being unloaded off of planes which, if you noticed, was not seen during the two Gulf Wars.  All those who died in these conflicts were brought home at night and no TV was allowed. 

After Vietnam, there were no major conflicts for the reporters to really get into until the first Gulf War.  Then, the government allowed reporters to be "embedded" with certain units, but the level of violence and actual war was not shown.  What you saw on TV then was stories about the units and a few explosions and maybe some people running around carrying weapons.  This was nothing to what you could see on TV during Vietnam.

So the effect?  As I said, more people got to see what was actually going on in Vietnam rather than hearing about it and the harsh reality of war was right in front of you every night.  And the media also made a big deal of of "body counts" and other attention grabbing statistics.  So it became an unpopular war because of the media and the bias that was spread about fighting in a country very few people ever knew about.  I seem to remember that stories about Vietnam were always the first news item of the evening.

Larryj

[Rudy Taylor]

Larry is correct about the media's treatment of the Vietnam War. It was a new experience for Americans to sit down for their evening meal, or breakfast, while watching TV. And on that screen they saw, for the first time in American history, pictures of real warfare, not the Hollywood versions we remember from W.W.II.

TV news also had the pragmatic issue to trying to tell a story in three minutes --- so different from the detailed accounts available when people took the time to read newspaper stories. It's the nature of brevity in storytelling --- you're always going to hit the high points, death counts, blood, gore, mistakes in military and political leadership, rather than telling the basic story of what a particular military company did on a particular day on a particular hill in a country located 10,000 miles from our shores.

The result that I saw from my experience as a newsman in the homeland during that war was feeling that the American people were being fed misinformation by official sources (can you imagine such a concept? Ha).

The unfortunate part of it all was the effect it had on the soldiers, sailers and airmen who fought in Vietnam. I talked to a veteran only yesterday who still suffers from the rejection he and his buddies felt when they came home --- not welcomed in a big armory or airplane hanger by their friends --- but individually, on passenger planes with standby tickets, told to wear their civilian clothes rather than their uniforms, and told to stare straight ahead when confronted by protesters in the airports.

So, along comes Woodstock in the big middle of it all. It drew plenty of protesters but also drew disillusioned Vietnam vets, a gaggle of media hounds, and plenty of kids who arrived "just because it was there." College students do those things, you know.

Diane, I personally appreciate Al's service to this country, and I loved the way you responded to Dr. Whetstone's post. I have always found you to be thoughtful in your opinions and I'm sorry that you often are trashed for simply expressing your thoughts --- a right that Al and all other American Veterans have fought to protect.

[jarhead]

i guess I missed something here. Keep seeing where Diane was "trashed" and people being "critical " of her opinion. I see some questions asked of her opinion and why she has these opinions and that's it. I see no disrespect anywhere. The "douchebag" comment wasn't even on this thread, like Charles said. Rudy & Larry, your last posts were right on.

[larryJ]

Nice post, Rudy.  I think I mentioned sometime back on another thread about the difference between broadcast coverage and print media coverage.  As you are working in print media and I spent almost all of my working years in print media, I suppose we are traditionally against broadcast media.  In fact, when I hear or see a story on TV given to me in a few seconds or one or two minutes, I try to read about it in the newspaper in order to get the full story. 
                                                                                                                                                                              Interestingly enough, in the last few months, I find myself turning on the TV only for shows that I want to watch and hardly ever for any news.  I read my news in the local paper or look, briefly, at the Internet news while signing on the computer. 

I am getting older by the minute and don't need the hype from TV news.  Old joke:  From TV news broadcast:  "CAUTION:  What you are eating for dinner will kill you.  News at 11."  I have decided that if the world is in danger, I don't want to know about it so I won't have to worry about it.  If the world truly is in danger, I can't stop it. 

(NEWSFLASH:  THE WORLD WILL BE HIT BY A  HUGE METEOR IN 2109)  What?  A hundred years from now?  Why tell me this now?  It's not like I am going to be here for it.

Woodstock was a big music concert and that is what it was supposed to be.  A "be-in"  The fact that there were anti-war protesters there "a sit-in" was picked up by the media and probably hyped more than it should have been.  "Sex, drugs and rock and roll" sounded a whole more enticing than taking two years of your life to fight a war.

Rambling again.

Larryj

[larryJ]

Diane, just keep this in mind----------------"Don't hate me because I'm beautiful." 

I think that there are those on this forum who are too young to know what it was like then and can't imagine the way things were.  Why they choose to pick on you remains a mystery, tho, because I and others have stated pretty much the same opinions and thoughts that you did.  So, hence, see above statement and please keep posting because unlike others I want to hear what you think.

Larry (#2 fan, Al is #1 fan)

[Wilma]

Diane, I do not understand why some people can express their opinion and it is accepted an other's opinions are rejected.  I, for one, value your opinions and information, so, please, keep posting.  I will read yours while some of the others I have stopped reading.

[sixdogsmom]

Sorry for any confusion I caused, and Dave, I am sorry that you will need to think about editing what your son learns here. I logged off rather early because of the storm last night, we have been getting some ferocious lightening. Kinda like on the forum, Lol! The Woodstock era were troubled times for certain; social mores' were changing especially with the advent of birth control pills. That changed a lot of things as did the death of the Hays office in the movies. The entire nation was in a process of change, morphing from the national fear experienced during the Great Depression years and WWII. The universitys were full up with folks there not to be educated, but to avoid the draft. We lost our innocence, we had lost a president to an assasins' bullets, and we learned that other nations leaders around the world had been assacinated by our own CIA. No wonder the young people rebelled, and the nation is probably fortunate that it only displayed the rebellion with sex, drugs and rock & roll. A few went too far, Abby Hoffman and his group, and of course Californias' own Charlie Manson. BTW, I hear that Squeaky Fromm was just released from jail. Some of the events I have named occured before and after Woodstock, but are all part of the social atmosphere of the times. This was not the favorite time of my life.

[greatguns]

Diane, you should have never deleted those paragraphs as you could probally gone from an A to A+.  You just might have to e-mail me the rest of the story.  And how is your weather back there?

[greatguns]

Thanks for the weather report and I completely understand what you are saying on the other subject.

[Teresa]

Get back to the topic at hand and enough of the" poor me" whining jag...
Or I will edit it for David myself!

jeese...........