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U.S. History 1877-Present 12.3a: We Object 35 Views
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Description:
When journalists started documenting the war in Vietnam, the American people discovered just how blissful ignorance could be. Warning: this video contains some disturbing images.
Transcript
- 00:03
The modern age comes with access to virtually limitless [typing in search engine]
- 00:07
information. It's actually kind of overwhelming, and sometimes we might feel [person at computer]
- 00:11
like ignorance truly is bliss. After all, do we really need to know what some
- 00:15
Facebook friend we met once at a party is having for brunch? Do we care what
- 00:20
cute sing their pet did? Well, probably not, though that is pretty cute... Yeah, what the hay, [cat video]
Full Transcript
- 00:25
we like it. Anyway, while the people of the 1960s and 70s didn't have cute dog videos on Facebook, they did
- 00:31
have new access to information, though it might seem like peanuts to us today. They [person uses phone]
- 00:36
had live news coverage, radio coverage, and journalists on the ground reporting back [radio dial turns]
- 00:41
on the war in Vietnam. What's more, they had the experience of soldiers fed [Vietnam TV coverage]
- 00:46
up with the futility of this war. Some called Vietnam the first living room war.
- 00:51
Do not be confused with what happens when dysfunctional families get together
- 00:55
for Thanksgiving. It means that the war was piped in via television to every [family meets for Thanksgiving]
- 00:59
living room in America. Photographers and cameramen delivered horrifying images,
- 01:04
including the charred body of a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, the [Vietnam war photos]
- 01:08
assassination of a Viet Cong sympathizer, and the bloody, deformed
- 01:12
corpses of Vietnamese villagers. Horror movies were less scary than this.
- 01:16
While American reporters traveling alongside U.S. troops broadcasted the gritty reality of [reporter travels with troops]
- 01:22
life and death on the Vietnam War front, the national and local printed press was
- 01:27
also pumping out the grisly details of the war. National publications like the [van delivers paper]
- 01:31
New York Times and Washington Post published detailed reports from the war [newspaper]
- 01:35
front. One dispatch from Jack Langguth in june 1965 included [war photos]
- 01:40
descriptions of the carnage left after U.S. saturation bombing and napalm strikes
- 01:45
in Quang Ngai. There were images of hundreds dead many more severely wounded, [Quang Ngai photos]
- 01:50
burned, mutilated--most of them women. Some military personnel returning from the war
- 01:55
front were also totally cynical about of the war itself. In an essay entitled, [soldier returns home with sign]
- 02:00
"The Whole Thing was a Lie," Donald Duncan, a top-ranking sergeant who served in
- 02:05
Vietnam for one and a half years, argued for a full U.S. withdrawal. Duncan argued [Duncan pictured]
- 02:11
that it should be up to the Vietnamese whether
- 02:13
or not they wanted to be communists. He said that allying ourselves with bad [Duncan argues against war]
- 02:17
guys and using horrific tactics to try and defeat the communists was making bad
- 02:21
guys out of us. Bad guys fighting bad guys, what was this? Suicide squad? All [movie villains pictured]
- 02:26
right, well local newspapers also relayed information about the war, sometimes
- 02:30
through the publication of soldiers' letters home. Well, these often told [person reads paper]
- 02:34
gut-wrenching stories about terrible battles with the Viet Cong, senseless
- 02:38
killing, and plenty of confusion and frustration about military operations [letters from soldiers shown]
- 02:43
and U.S. goals. Well, year after year, Americans bore witness through mass media [bombing footage]
- 02:47
to the bombing, the firestorms, the shooting, the killing of Vietnamese, and
- 02:51
the deaths of U.S. soldiers. Yet, year after year, American leaders, without explaining
- 02:57
the terms of war, called the nation to accept it as necessary. That's how [Nixon shows chalkboard]
- 03:02
america's foray into mass media whipped the country into a whirlwind of
- 03:06
discontent. The truth is that more information isn't always that comforting. [media outlets fly by]
- 03:10
Kind of like when that Facebook friend we met once at a party posts about the [person dreams]
- 03:13
things he dreams about at night. All we can say is, "Ew."
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