Dear Editor,

Communist Vietnam is now one of America’s trading partners.

Americans now vacation there for entertainment, of sorts.

OK. Commerce trumps all else.

But a television show Sunday night featured in one segment, as entertainment, a Vietnamese musical elaborating on the glories of socialism.

Another site was selected as part of the program because it featured the wreck of an American bomber prominently displayed in a pool of water.

That was too much for me. The context of using these displays as part of entertainment on American television is in poor taste, in my opinion.

Many of my generation died in that bomber as did others elsewhere in that country carrying out U.S. foreign policy.

As a television viewer, that was an unsuspecting slap in the face.

I have nothing against the Vietnamese people. I don’t check labels, but I may be wearing clothing made in Vietnam.

I’m sure television programming would not use one of the Holocaust ovens used by the Nazis in World War II in the background of one of their entertainment clips, out of respect for all who died there.

I think we are due respect also for the thousands of Americans who died in Vietnam not to show their tragedy there as entertainment.

And not to use segments glorifying communism as entertainment, which in a sense was rubbing in our faces that in that place communism triumphed over democracy, an idea we fought for to give it a chance in that country.

Tom MacCallum

Rockingham