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Kennedy after seeing her husband's brains blown out. She needed protection. And both chose very rich men as their protectors. It is understandable. Most of us don't know what it's like to be such high visibility targets, never knowing a moment of rest for yourself or your kids. Jane wrote a very fine autobiography recently, and took it on a book tour. Very interesting book--about her early life (daughter of a very cold father--but an American ikon, Henry Fonda), her "Barbarella" years, her marriages (she's no longer married to Ted Turner), and her trip to Hanoi. She went alone, a very young woman, with the purpose of exposing US bombing of civilian targets, nobody with her, not even a PR person--and she basically got "swift-boated." About five years before that happened, I remember being in three-inch high spike heels, wearing nylons with a seam down the back that you had to keep straight, a girdle, a bra, white gloves and fashionable clothes, with a bouffant hairdo and lots of makeup. I was as ikon to American womanhood. We forget how suddenly that changed, almost overnight. I'd say, between 1963 and 1964. The changes of that era were mind-bogging and vastly disorienting. One day, you were one person. The next day, you didn't recognize who you were yesterday. So, I imagine that some of the "Hanoi Jane" mythology comes from men's feeling of trauma at a woman like Jane Fonda--"Barbarella"--sympathizing with the slaughtered millions of Vietnam, and actually having the balls to visit Hanoi on a peace mission. It stung the macho guys--and still does--as much as their loss of that war stings them, the mighty US military machine defeated by little brown people in straw hats and sandals.
Peace to you, Jane--and to your detractors! May we all know peace some day. And may we all realize, in our hearts, some day soon, that neither the Vietnamese nor the Iraqis ever needed to be our "enemies." Our foreign policy is highly manipulated by hugely powerful war profiteers. It was then. It is now. I admire the physical courage of soldiers, and I'm sure I would be very grateful for their presence and their protection, if I ever felt threatened. I also admire moral courage, such as Jane Fonda showed--the courage of her convictions, and her ability to see the Vietnamese as human beings, at a time when our government wanted us to see them as "gooks"--as just a lot of brown riffraff that deserved to be exterminated--and to put her body on the line for peace. Pretzel4Gore, you dis her for having money. Yet, despite her privileged upbringing (as to money, not as to love), her fame, her career, her image as a "sex goddess," this woman took a stance that turned out to be a very difficult and perilous one. That is deserving of admiration, it seems to me. And every time she tries to recover her career, or benefit in any way from her fame, the witchburners come out again, ready to burn her at the stake. I do not think it fair to clump her together with "other 'left' types," enjoying their "goofball cash in scented elegant hideaways, etc." It is dehumanizing. And you cannot look at her face now and not see that she has suffered a lot, and you can't read her story and not realize how hard she has tried to overcome her upbringing and to become a politically aware citizen and a better human being. Also, it's too easy to second-guess someone in her position--a constant target of hatred--and to prescribe what she should do. I actually share your impatience with "latte liberals" and I've often wondered at Turner and the CNN sale. But I don't envy Jane Fonda her money, or anything else. She tried harder than anyone else on earth to stop that war. She took more risks than any other antiwar activist. She was a bulwark to many soldiers traumatized by the war. She didn't have to do all that. She was a well-known actress with a plush career ahead of her, which she sacrificed to stop the war. She was a great inspiration to me, as a young woman. And that's all I need to know.
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