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Take the Star Out of the Window · Oct 2, 08:13 PM

Scribblingwoman linked to my John Prine post & frankly I don’t know how I would answer a five-year-old’s questions about all those magnetic “ribbons” stuck to nearly every car you see. But I might start by saying something like, “People find it hard to think, so instead of thinking they join a group & the ribbon says that they are part of this or that group.”

Nick Spitzer played another Prine song on that American Routes show, a song with a chorus that cuts right through the bullshit:

Robert was a sailor
For the best years of his life
His captain was his mother
And the ocean was his wife
Only fresh out of the cradle
Life’s one and only spring
He was sworn to do his duty
And got blood on his high school ring

And it’s hello California
Hello dad and mom
Ship ahoy
Your baby boy
Is home from Vietnam
Don’t you ask me any questions
‘bout the medals on my chest
Take the star out of the window
And let my conscience take a rest

Now he sailed across the ocean
To the old Far Eastern war
And it was foreign to his body
It was foreign to his shore
So he traded in the present
For the better times he’d seen
And made an Oriental waitress
His own home comin’ queen.

This is a remarkably surreal & astute distilation of the whole Vietnam nightmare, though in introducing yet another of his Vietnam songs, “Sam Stone,” Prine himself repeats the old nonsense about prosters spitting on returning veterans in airports & undercuts the icy truth of the lyric about Robert, who “got blood on his high school ring.”

The spitting-on-veterans story is the foundational myth of the current haigography of veterans & I am sick to death of it myself. Given the stories about torture & atrocities emerging from Iraq, I’m frankly not willing to give veterans a pass. I live near Fort Drum in New York I pick up a lot of violent racist static from returning vets & their supporters. All you have to do is listen to conversations at the Post Office or the general store to get a feel for this nasty buzz.

At best, the troops that the magnetic ribbons declare support for are politically naieve & at worst are those who, like Robert in Prine’s song, need to let their “conscience take a rest.” Sure, the politicians & generals are more culpable, but Today’s Army® is made up of volunteers. As far as I’m concerned, the most patriotic thing the troops could do would be to refuse to serve.

During Vietnam, there were a lot of young men who were willing to risk jail or exile in order to keep from falling into the bloody maw of the Vietnam meat grinder. I just don’t see that happening right now, despite the fact that the Iraq war is so clearly an even bigger fuck-up that Vietnam. The origins of the Vietnam War are rooted in a terribly misplaced idealism; the origins of the Iraq war are rooted in nothing but cynicism. The fact that the troops fighting in Iraq are poor exploited bastards doesn’t mean they should get a free moral pass when they come home.

Instead, the current hyper-patriotic culture insists that we not ask any questions about the medals on their chests. That insistence was particularly clear in the Swift Boaters’ attack on John Kerry. Kerry’s testimony as a Winter Soldier simply had to be erased. My Lai never happened, just like Abu Ghraib. Or if it did, it was justifiable. Or, if it wasn’t justifiable, it was understandable, given the circumstances. The operative dynamic here, which Prine nails exactly is, “Don’t you ask me any questions.”

I won’t be spitting on any Iraq veterans, but neither will I be putting a yellow support-the-troops ribbon on my car. Each veteran will have to answer to his own conscience—about serving in a clearly immoral war & about his or her own actions in that war. As for those who use the bodies of the troops as political capital, they are already in hell. They may be walking around in the light, but they are already in hell.

==

Note: See this post on The Celestial Monochord on Prine’s song. The blog is new to me but looks to be taking up the sorts of things about popular culture that fascinate me. The author, in commenting on “Take the Star Out of the Window,” notes one of Prine’s most characteristic techniques, which is to put a mordant or satirical lyric to a jaunty tune. Prine’s song “Sam Stone,” much better known (because more emotionally stable) than “Take the Star Out of the Window,” would probably be even more devestating if set to an upbeat tune.

* * *

  1. Does “Sam Stone” repeat the spitting-in-the-face story? I didn’t remember, so I checked the lyrics, and I don’t see it there—though it’s late and I’ve been reading all day, so maybe there’s a reference there that slips past me.

    I’ve always liked “Great Compromise” as a sharp comment on losing faith in patriotism. Prine has a neat comment about that song in the notes for Great Days. He says something along the lines of “I’ve always loved America, but I don’t know how to get there, anymore.”

    Thanks for the pointer to the broadcast (managed to hear some of it last night) and The Celestial Monochord. I see there’s a whole series on Prine there—will definitely check it out further.
    — alan    10/03/2006 03:05 AM    #
  2. Alan, Prine repeats the spitting myth in introducing the song. That is, he still hasn’t been disabused of it. And Nick Spitzer is a folklorist, who should know better.
    — jd    10/03/2006 07:26 AM    #
  3. Thanks, Joseph. I hadn’t realized the comments were part of the broadcast, though now that I look again, I see you said it was in his introduction the song.
    — alan    10/03/2006 11:30 AM    #
  4. Mitch McConnell believes it, too (via tristero).
    — alan    10/05/2006 12:20 PM    #