JANE FONDA at an antiwar conference in the Netherlands in 1975 (Wikipedia).
Jane Fonda was in the news this week – national as well as local – when the Westminster City Council held a special meeting on Friday to pass a resolution demanding that the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors rescind its awarding its own resolution honoring the film actress for her work on climate change.
The council’s objection didn’t have much to do so much with the ice caps melting as it did with her notorious visit to North Vietnam in 1972. Not only did she express doubt that POWs she met with were telling the truth that abuse and torture of American prisoners (mostly pilots) was routine, she posed for a photograph on an anti-aircraft battery wearing a military helmet.
(The timing was awful; the L.A. County honor came on April 30, the day that Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese army).
The implications of the image were obvious; Jane was seeming to be giving tacit approval to the killing of American airmen.
That has dogged her all her life. She was slow to apologize and even when she made a more abject mea culpa, it was far too late.
Yes, she was just an ignorant young woman with little to no understanding of what she was doing. Still, she did it willingly. Some people say, give her a chance. She apologized.
But there are 58,000 Americans who died in that war. They can never hear her regrets. She was a privileged rich kid whose actions mocked the working class kids who fought the war. They didn’t have the option of being willing fools, like Jane.
You don’t have to feel that the Vietnam War – whose implications still echo strongly, especially in Orange County – was the best course for America, to understand that there’s a difference between honest dissent and shallow Hollywood political theater.
Just as it’s too late to save the lives of those 58,000 – not to mention the many who were wounded physically or emotionally scarred – it’s too late for me to feel comfortable saying, “That’s OK, Jane.”
The life you lead depends on the decisions you make. She made a bad one in 1972, and it follows her yet. Just like memories of the wounded who wore the uniform in an unpopular war a half-century ago.
Categories: Opinion
I absolutely loathe and detest Jane the ass Fonda. I attended a rally with a friend to hear her speak and was so incensed with her vile rhetoric that I wanted to leap up and slap her hard across her stupid face. She’s a spoiled and entitled witch and I’m sorry she has lived so long.
as far as i know, no casualties occurred as a result of jane fonda’s ill-advised visit.
the same can’t be said of the cabal of u.s. policy makers and war profiteers who thought it was a good idea to tread in s.e. east asia, where the french had already disastrously failed in the mid-20th century.
all that venomous spittle and sanctimony in such copious draughts for an octogenarian entertainer, but not a note of reprimand for decision makers who actually imperiled american lives–for filthy lucre.
This is a well thought out reply. The disastrous loss of American and Vietnamese lives was a preventable tragedy.
The American service men and women that were drafted into this war came home shattered with ptsd.
Jane Fonda is an American icon. She has always stood up and voiced her support and opinion for she feels is just. The US policy makers were not on the ground in Vietnam. The destruction there and loss of lives on both sides is unconscionable.
William Calley Jr., (no winners in war, Imo).
The only reason Jane Fonda has worked on Climate Change was in her own mind was to try and fix the damage she has done to our Service Men & Women of this Country! Let her face the Lord fir what she has done!!
Dan Kelley
GySgt, USMC, Retired