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“I AM REALITY” REDRAWING THE TERMS OF BATTLE, 1985–1989 Amid the ongoing tragedy in Cambodia and the United States’ continuing policy of “bleeding” Vietnam, the spring of 1985 brought with it the ten-year anniversary of the end of the Second Indochina War. The occasion was marked in the United States by official state department addresses, several academic symposia, editorials and special sections in most major American papers, cover story retrospectives in leading weekly news magazines, and numerous television reports. In Vietnam, the anniversary received less sustained attention. Aside from a few official pronouncements from the Party and the occasional flag-waving ceremony, the liberation of the South was quietly commemorated in the North. In the South itself, however, where the “ideological and cultural” component of the Vietnamese revolution continued to lag, a major festival was planned. Although more than a thousand Western journalists had applied for visas to cover the events, the Vietnamese government was wary of allowing too much media coverage. The official reason for reticence was that the press corps might constitute a “security risk.” Hanoi, after all, was not on particularly good terms with the United States and most of its allies at the time. The Vietnamese government was also taken aback at the interest in covering the events, particularly among the Americans whose defeat they were celebrating. “I’m not quite sure,” a media relations representative for the government told Jonathan Alter of Newsweek, “why there is this great desire by you Americans to relive this terrible defeat.” Alter explained in his article that the reason, “of course,” was “to learn from it.”1 Even the American media itself, Alter included, seemed surprised at the scope of the coverage. All three major U.S. television networks devoted substantial airtime to the anniversary, with ABC and NBC sending, at considerable four “i am reality” 117 cost, extensive crews to provide live satellite feeds from Ho Chi Minh City.2 The coverage proved both difficult and disappointing. ABC’s Nightline featured a “debate” between Le Duc Tho and Henry Kissinger, the two men who once shared the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the shaky agreement to end U.S. involvement in Vietnam (Le Duc Tho declined the prize, arguing that the agreement had not achieved peace). The broadcast was a disaster, beset with logistical and technical difficulties. Mixed audio signals caused a cacophony of overlapping voices, with host Ted Koppel, Tho, and his translator constantly speaking over one another. A frustrated Kissinger, who felt unable to break through the noise, complained to the network, with which he had a consulting contract at the time, and succeeded in extending the show ten minutes to allow him a proper “response.”3 NBC’s Today show had other problems. Throughout the week, the morning show aired live segments from Ho Chi Minh City, where it was late in the evening . During several pieces, Vietnam’s legendary insects took aim at host Bryant Gumbel and his guests. As media critic Tom Shales put it in the Washington Post, “the huge TV lights attracted great hordes of winged creatures that encircled and bombarded the anchorman.”4 Shales also reported that most network executives considered the coverage a complete technical and financial failure. Many had hoped for a “big story,” particularly “a break in the MIA story,” but they had decided by midweek that no news was being made. For Shales, though, the fact that the Vietnamese commemorations turned out not to be newsworthy paled in significance, in light of the construction he chose to put on the anniversary. After taking the networks to task for their shoddy reports, he pointed out that the main problem with the entire effort was that the media missed the “real” story: “One crucial thing that none of the network newsbobs seems willing to consider is that by going to Vietnam, and with such a flurry, they missed the real Vietnam story, which can be covered without leaving the United States. This is where the American soldiers who fought and survived are, this is where the government officials who engineered the war are, and this is where the real scars are, as far as American involvement is concerned.”5 Of course, “the real Vietnam story,” as we will see shortly, was more than adequately covered by the American press, which had no difficulty focusing its attention on the United States. In fact, Shales’s remarks demonstrate the extent...

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