This Week's Sneak Peek

I had to undergo a routine colonoscopy last week. The procedure itself isn't so bad; they drug you so that you don't remember any of it.

The worst part, of course, is having to chug a gallon of this stuff called GoLytely that makes you completely clean out your bowels. By the gallon. You can flavor the jug, but I don't recommend it. I added lime flavoring to it my first time, and it put me off anything lime flavored for months afterward. Personally, I recommend taking a few drops of honey, but only when the GoLytely aftertaste is making it a challenge to keep quaffing the stuff on schedule.

The second worst part, this time, was having three nurses take turns poking holes in my hands and arms in search of a vein. My procedure was scheduled in the mid afternoon, by which time I was thoroughly dehydrated. My husband, a recently retired nurse, could only watch and offer suggestions, which can only have been frustrating for him. He's generally one to step in and take over, not sit by and advise.

The third worst part was trying not to listen to the patient in the next partition, separated only by a curtain as thin as a bedsheet. She was the patient ahead of me, and she was adamant that she not receive any transfusions of "vaccinated blood." Seriously.

Her nurse tried telling her that the hospital doesn't separate donated blood according to vaccination status, but Mrs. Virginia Pureblood insisted that she had had her GP put on her chart that she didn't want any vaccinated blood polluting her purity of essence, and she had made sure that they noted that at the intake desk, too.

I wouldn't be surprised if she had ordered a testing kit from the MyPillow guy to make sure they weren't sneaking vaccines into her GoLytely. (Trust me: nothing in that stuff is staying in your body long enough to vaccinate you against anything.)

One hopes that she hasn't convinced some Republican wingnut in the state legislature or Congress to author a bill mandating separation of vaccinated and vaccine-free blood supplies. Heck, what are the chances that it's not already the law someplace where Drawl is the Official State Language?

...It Tolls for Thieu

"American Monument in Southeast Asia" by Frank Miller in Des Moines Register, March 20, 1975

Two weeks ago, our Graphical History Tour visited southeast Asia for the 50th anniversary of the fall of Phnom Penh to the communist Khmer Rouge. Today, we return for Part Thieu.

"We're Gettin' Out of Here" by Dave Engelhardt in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 1, 1975

North Vietnam launched a full-scale invasion of the South in January, 1975, its People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and the Viet Cong (properly, the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam)  racking up a string of victories. As it became crystal clear that the U.S. Calvary was not going to ride in to save the day, South Vietnamese President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu pulled back the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) for a last-ditch, desperate bid to protect his capital, then known as Saigon.

"We Would Be Much Braver Than This" by Pat Oliphant in Washington [DC] Star, ca. Apr. 3, 1975

ARVN’s hurried retreat left  military hardware abandoned in its wake, and ran through the panicked evacuation of civilians. Anyone with any connection to civilian government or the U.S. military fled in fear for their lives, with whatever they could carry.

The Chicago Tribune reported isolated instances of Americans in the path of the retreat being robbed by ARVN soldiers. The report quoted an anonymous Westerner that, "The South Vietnamese soldier feels he has been stabbed in the back by the Americans. He feels that he has had to suffer because of the war, but Americans come and go in Vietnam, brandishing their dollars, and he feels they owe him something, anything."

by Jeff MacNelly in Richmond [VA] News-Leader, ca. Mar. 30, 1975 

That report quoted an American teacher in Saigon: "The Vietnamese people are convinced that America has betrayed them. They believe we led them into the battle, then ran away and left them to fight. They have very little respect for us as a people."

On the other hand, a Vietnamese teacher at a Catholic school told the same reporter, "Americans have a tremendous guilt complex about what they have done in our country, the mistakes they have made, and now they feel everybody here hates them for it. Actually, the Vietnamese people don't hate the Americans, they just don't understand them. But who does?"

"Selling It to Congress Won't Be Easy" by Wayne Stayskal in Chicago Tribune, April 13, 1975

Acknowledging that the United States still had an obligation to the people who had relied on American promises, the Ford Administration opened the doors to as many Cambodian and South Vietnamese refugees as wanted to come to the U.S. 

In a joint effort, the U.S. military and Immigration and Naturalization Services (predecessor to today's ICE) scrambled to accommodate an estimated 120,000 refugees.

"Can the Congress Be So Calloused" by Hugh Haynie in Louisville Courier-Journal, April 16, 1975

The airlift started with Cambodian and Vietnamese children — mostly given up by terrified parents — arriving a Camp Pendleton, California, to be adopted by American parents. Then came whole families, sponsored by religious congregations and civic groups until they could make a living for themselves in a country where nobody spoke their language.

Sponsoring agencies had to commit to finding housing and jobs for the refugees, most of whom arrived with little more than the clothes on their backs, whatever their circumstances might have been back home.

"There Goes the Old Neighborhood" by Dick Locher in Chicago Tribune, May 11, 1975

The cost of caring for the refugees while they were in temporary camps awaiting resettlement was predicted to cost $500 million (in 1975 dollars, or nearly $3 billion today). Inevitably, Americans being Americans, resistance and resentment soon arose to the wave of  strangers who would supposedly — this may sound familiar — eat the neighborhood dogs and the cats. 

U.S. News & World Report described refugees as "a motley mixture, from professors to bar girls." Washington Post Columnist Nicholas von Hoffman accused some of being "the pimps, madams, and hijackers of American food and material" and "the torturers from Gen. Thieu's political police."

"Thank God It's All Thieu's Fault" by Tom Curtis in Milwaukee Sentinel, April 3, 1975

Nguyễn Văn Thiệu had been President of South Vietnam since 1967. What opposition there was to his rule was unable to unite around any rival leader during elections in 1971.

Refugees fleeing south as the communists advanced "are voting with their feet," wrote National Observer columnist James M. Perry. "Trouble is, there is no one for them to elect. The army is in panic, the Thieu regime is broken, and Thieu himself is finally exposed as the pusillanimous fraud he has always been."

by David E. Seavey in National Observer, Washington DC, April 12, 1975

Thiệu resigned the presidency on April 22 in a rambling speech in which he revealed that to get him to sign the 1973 Paris Peace Accord, then-President Richard Nixon had promised that the U.S. military would return if the peace failed. Tearfully blaming the U.S. for his plight, he told his nation, "I never thought that a man like Mr. Secretary of State Kissinger would deliver our people to such a disastrous fate. ... If the Americans don't want to support us any more, let them go, get out! Let them forget their humanitarian promises!"

"King Rat" by Paul Szep in Boston Globe, April 22, 1975

Thiệu turned the government over to his ailing 72-year-old Vice President, Trần Văn Hương, who then resigned, succeeded by ARVN General Dương Văn Minh, 59. A leader of the 1963 coup that overthrew Ngô Đình Diệm, "Big Minh" had nevertheless earned a reputation for indecision.

Three days after ascending to the presidency, with PAVN advancing into Saigon and the U.S. hastily evacuating its embassy, Minh ordered ARVN to lay down its arms and surrendered to North Vietnam. Having offered no resistance to the victorious North, he was allowed to retire in peace, but eventually left for France.

"Will the Last One Out..." by Wayne Stayskal in Chicago Tribune, April 27, 1975

Thiệu retired to the United States, living out his days here in obscurity. He died at age 78 in Boston, Massachusetts on September 29, 2001 after suffering a stroke.

Q Toon: This Boycott's for You

Two years ago this month, transphobes got their knickers in a knot over Budweiser for signing transgender internet personality Dylan Mulvaney on to advertise their light beer. Mulvaney, a stage actor and comedian, had documented her transition on TikTok during the COVID lockdown, gaining millions of followers.

She became enough of a celebrity to snag an interview with President Joe Biden, raising the dander of the likes of Senator Marcia Blackburn (R-I Want to See Your Manager). Then Budweiser's parent company, Anheuser-Busch, entered the picture.  

On April 1, Mulvaney shared a video promoting Bud Light as part of a partnership with the beer. She appears dressed as the “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” character, Holly Golightly, while joking about confusing the meaning of the term “March Madness.” While some people were celebrating sports that month, Mulvaney said she was celebrating a milestone with her “365 Days of Girlhood” series, the one-year mark since her transition. Bud Light gave her a custom can of their beer with her face on it to commemorate the milestone.

And the right wingnuts went, well, nuts.

Fox Noisemakers, Republican Congresskarens, and southern Governors called for a nationwide boycott of the beer. Bubbas TikTokked themselves running over cans of Bud Light with their pick-ups, and Kid Rock famously shot up three cases of the stuff with a semiautomatic rifle.

At the time, an Anheuser-Busch spokesman defended its partnership with Mulvaney, issuing a statement that the company “works with hundreds of influencers across our brands as one of many ways to authentically connect with audiences across various demographics."

Harvard Business Review reported that sales of Bud Light fell by nearly a third over the rest of 2023. The company's President of Operations loudly quit, blaming DEI for Bud's problems and joining up with anti-diversity activist Vivek Ramaswami (remember him?) to promote Conformity, Inequity, and Exclusion.

Two years on, we have a White House mandating trans-bashing, and Budweiser has hired Shane Gillis as their advertising spokesbubba. And in March, Anheuser-Busch announced that it would no longer be a sponsor of the LGBTQ+ Pride Festival in St. Louis, or anywhere else. The announcement of the end of a partnership begun in 1995 was a front page banner headline in St. Louis Post-Dispatch and has prompted a new boycott from the other side of the sociopolitical gulf. It has also left a gaping hole in Pride St. Louis finances.

"It was just interesting that the longest partner of ours for 30 years that they've been at the table with us and a true ally just decided to walk away after basically just saying that they just don't see the value in it anymore," Pride St. Louis President Marty Zuniga said Tuesday.

Now personally, I've never been a Bud Light drinker in the first place. It's yellowish water that foams a bit if you pour it enthusiastically, and I prefer something with considerably more body and flavor. Something that will satisfy my thirst after one or two mugs, say, a porter, stout, or lager. So my contribution to any boycott will be negligible.

Unless you calculate my boycott starting from my 18th birthday.