From a reader:

Jonah: your USA Today column today begins with a note of skepticism about stories of U.S. soldiers returning from Vietnam and being spat on or called war criminals. Not to compare the two of you, but Keith Olberman recently asserted on his television show that there is no evidence that Vietnam soldiers were spat upon when they returned from the war.
You should look up an excellent book titled “Homecoming” that was published in 1990 by the newspaper columnist Bob Green. The book consists entirely of responses that Green got when he wrote a column asking Vietnam veterans to write to him describing whether or not they were spat upon or how they were otherwise treated upon their return from Vietnam. (Green went to some effort to verify that those who wrote to him had served in Vietnam.) The book has three chapters: one consists of the accounts of people who were not spat upon and who say that they were treated well. This is the shortest chapter. Another chapter tells the stories of those who were spat upon at the airport or other places upon their arrival in the U.S. And the last chapter is called “Some Things Are Worse than Being Spat Upon.”
It is a disturbing book that paints a very ugly picture of the America of late 1960s and early 1970s.

Me: Just to be clear, I don’t think it’s anything like an urban legend that troops were mistreated after and during Vietnam. I was merely trying to anticipate the fact that some people think that story has been exaggerated by phrasing the lede in such a way as to establish that insulting the troops is bad in its own right, whether or not the extent of the phenomenon was exaggerated. Indeed, while it sounds like Olbermann should be ashamed of himself for trying to deny history outright, he’s still conceding that if it happened, it would have been bad. Anyway, it sounds like an interesting book.