Word: viets
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...friends, allies, trading partners and imitators in the region are thriving. Capitalism has boomed, and democracy has made tenuous but still significant progress. Meanwhile, America's onetime enemies are either realigning or undergoing a potentially millennial transformation, or both. In China "modernization" is a euphemism for de-communization. Viet Nam is pulling its troops out of Kampuchea and liberalizing its joint-venture laws to permit greater ownership by foreign investors. Even the hermit tyranny of North Korea has agreed to cooperate with a Seoul businessman in the development of a mountain resort just north of the Demilitarized Zone -- a breakthrough...
...recent years, however, the military's lock on that market has been challenged by groups as diverse as the Red Cross, Viet Nam veterans, CARE and the Quakers. These so-called peace recruiters now turn up regularly in school classrooms and at job fairs and career days across the country. Some seek to interest students in working for such organizations as the Peace Corps and VISTA, or help them find nonmilitary assistance for college. Others try to show those intent on military careers exactly what they are getting into. Many do all three. Says Lou Ann Merkle of the Central...
...being a pretty depressing human endeavor, has never been a favorite subject for network entertainment. The Viet Nam War, being pretty depressing even as wars go, would seem to be nearly untouchable. Not only was there too much R-rated action (drug abuse, massacres of civilians) but the story had an unhappy ending. Such recent movies as Platoon and Full Metal Jacket could immerse their audience in the muck and moral quicksand for a couple of hours and then let go. But TV series must keep viewers coming back week after week, adhering to standards of "family entertainment" along...
...surprise, then, is that two weekly shows about Viet Nam have established themselves on the prime-time schedule. To be sure, both of them -- CBS's Tour of Duty and ABC's China Beach -- add plenty of TV fabric softener to the abrasive material. Each fills its sound track with '60s pop songs, as if Viet Nam were just another trip down nostalgia lane, like high school mixers and afternoons at the malt shop. Both have taken a predominantly male experience and leavened it with female characters and soap-opera story lines closer to Dallas than Saigon...
...political context. Rarely are they linked to any specific complaint about the conduct of the war -- a policy mistake or a battlefield blunder. It's just the eternal tragedy of war. At the same time, the angry pacifism once expounded by M*A*S*H (a TV series about Viet Nam that was set in Korea) has been tempered by sympathy for the average grunt. There is still a place, in TV's current view of Viet Nam, for courage in battle, duty and loyalty to buddies. At a champagne dinner for officers in China Beach, a Red Cross worker...