Jane Fonda says she is trying to apologize for allowing herself to be photographed sitting atop a North Vietnamese tank 30 or so years ago. Not coincidentally, she is at the same time trying to sell her autobiography, My Life So Far. At one stop during her book tour, a Vietnam veteran walked up to her and spit tobacco juice in her face. Fonda claims that most of the veterans she has met on the tour have greeted her warmly. Yes, and I can get you a good deal on the Brooklyn Bridge if you’re interested.
Last year’s presidential election showed us the wounds have not healed in America over the Vietnam War. There are some of us who believe that John Kerry would be president if not for the success of the Swift Boat Veterans’ critical ads. Fonda’s conduct during the Vietnam War always will be controversial. It is likely to be in the lead paragraph of her obituary.
I understand the lingering resentment against Fonda, especially by those who fought in that war. Her apology is hollow self-justification. She doesn’t apologize for going to North Vietnam at a time when we were at war with that country. She is only sorry that she sat on that tank. To listen to her, Fonda was merely tired and looking for a place to sit. She was just laughing and having a good time, but when the camera clicked, she instantly knew she had made a mistake. It is an "explanation" better off not given.
Fonda was accused by some of treason at that time. The legal definition of treason consists of two elements: "adherence to the enemy and rendering him aid and comfort." I am no legal expert, but despite my own anti-war sentiments during Vietnam, if Fonda’s conduct wasn’t treasonous, it was close enough that if you were a soldier, you might want to do more than spit in her face.
On the HBO show Real Time, Fonda was asked to compare Vietnam with our invasion of Iraq. She glibly offered the theory that both Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam and Saddam Hussein in Iraq could have been handled "differently." Jane lacks intellectual honesty. You can argue, as some of us now do, that without WMD or nuclear weapons, neither was a threat to this country. But Fonda argues "there was another way" to get rid of them. What way was that? She doesn’t say. Perhaps she is overrating her seductive powers.
Jane Fonda in the cold light of hindsight is quite pitiful. She is a self-styled feminist who allowed herself to become a clone of whichever husband she married. As film director Roger Vadim’s wife, she was Barbarella, the sex kitten on and off the screen. But she blames Vadim. As Tom Hayden’s wife, she morphed into Jane the radical who flew off to North Vietnam to, yes, give aid and comfort to the enemy. She claims Hayden used her. After he dumped her, she became the good corporate wife of television mogul Ted Turner. The TV pictures of her dozing beside him at baseball games wearing an Atlanta Braves cap were almost as sad as when she once sat astride that enemy tank. Turner is gone and, with the passage of years, so is Jane’s exercise-video empire. So she is back justifying herself to sell books instead of flat-abs tapes.
What is truly unfortunate is that Jane was once one of the finest actresses in Hollywood. Her crowning cinematic achievement, in my eyes, was her touching anti-war film Coming Home with Jon Voight and Bruce Dern. With so many kids coming home from Iraq with their limbs blown off, the film retains all of its meaning and poignancy. But Fonda tossed away her film career when she became Mrs. Ted Turner. At the time, she said she just wanted to be a full-time wife. It also may have been because unfairly, there are few roles for mature women in today’s movies. Most films are made for and about youth or people with minds stuck back in adolescence. Actresses such as Meryl Streep, Michelle Pfeiffer and Jessica Lange are routinely bypassed for today’s flavor of the month. So Fonda’s career was cut short before she could reach the pinnacle of classic stardom.
And now, the worst is happening. After her long stretch of inactivity in the movies, Jane Fonda will appear in something called Monster-In-Law.
After 30 years and that photo of Jane sitting on the tank in North Vietnam, she finally has earned our indifference.
