General Hersheybar
Encyclopedia
General Hersheybar is a satirical character of the Vietnam War
-era protest movement, who parodied U.S. General Lewis B. Hershey, then Director of the Selective Service. He was usually seen partnered with General Waste More Land (aka Tom Dunphy), a parody of General William Westmoreland
. The characters were common at street theater performances and demonstrations against U.S. military involvement in Vietnam
. General Hersheybar would appear in a comical military uniform complete with a plastic toy fighter-jet attached to his "officer's cap" and hand out fliers promoting his satirical diatribe. In addition he self-published several monographs and booklets.
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
-era protest movement, who parodied U.S. General Lewis B. Hershey, then Director of the Selective Service. He was usually seen partnered with General Waste More Land (aka Tom Dunphy), a parody of General William Westmoreland
William Westmoreland
William Childs Westmoreland was a United States Army General, who commanded US military operations in the Vietnam War at its peak , during the Tet Offensive. He adopted a strategy of attrition against the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam and the North Vietnamese Army. He later served as...
. The characters were common at street theater performances and demonstrations against U.S. military involvement in Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
. General Hersheybar would appear in a comical military uniform complete with a plastic toy fighter-jet attached to his "officer's cap" and hand out fliers promoting his satirical diatribe. In addition he self-published several monographs and booklets.
Appearances
- In 1969 General Hersheybar showed up at the AltamontAltamont Music FestivalThe Altamont Speedway Free Festival was an infamous rock concert held on Saturday, December 6, 1969, at the Altamont Speedway in northern California, between Tracy and Livermore...
free concert in California where performers included the Rolling Stones. Although he was apparently a self-invited guest, the movie made of the concert shows him in full regalia, making a gesture he satirically called a navel salute, which involved placing a horizontal hand on his navel then moving his arm out horizontally.
- He also made a cameo appearance in a low-budget movie made for public access, entitled Broadcast From The Future, in which he appeared as Doctor Everest Word. (Bluemonkey Films by Martin Cohen, also starring Evonne Pizzoni, aired in 1991).
- The characters of General Hersheybar and General Waste More Land were made into a 1967 underground comic book called Those Lovable Peace-Nuts by William StoutWilliam StoutWilliam Stout is an American fantasy artist and illustrator with a specialization in paleontological art. His paintings have been shown in over seventy exhibitions, including twelve one-man shows. He has worked on over thirty feature films, doing everything from storyboard art to production design...
.
- Photographer Richard Friedman wrote of encountering General Hersheybar at a so-called War Is Over march in the late 1960s: