LOL. That’s the first time I’ve ever been accused of being soft on Fonda! She should have been hanged for the role she played; but if that uneducated, tawdry actress/moron, a dupe of three husbands, should have been hanged—where does that put Kerry? He was the administrator of Viet Vets Against the War when she got interested in the Winter Soldier event. She paid for the venue, the transportation of the “vets,” the transcription of their “confessions.” But she’s not the one who came up with which “confessions” to accept and publicize, and which “penitents” to squeeze for more sensational stories. That was Kerry’s job, and one of the reasons he was able to communicate those “confessions” so volubly to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee two months later. That and the somewhat debatable fact that he was a “decorated’ Vietnam vet.
In brief, he knew the truth and lied, aside from meeting at least TWICE with the commies (Viet Cong as well as North Vietnamese) and, as a still active-duty serviceman, publicly lauded and advocated their “peaceful” solution; she knew NOTHING but her lines and read (and believed) them perfectly—which, by the way, never diminished her active leadership in communist party fronts. But you can’t seriously believe that any communist (other than Roger Vadim’s French theatrical associates) took her seriously—other than as a symbol and an attention-getter. Of course, she was cold-eyed, committed, and America-hating. And if she hadn’t been Henry Fonda’s daughter, no one on the planet would have cared what adolescent project she decided to pursue.
The Vietnam Wall? Way too long a story, but consider a few facts: How many other buried war memorials are there? How many are black? How many go out of their way to show the enormity of deaths, the futility of war? Not just in this country, but in ANY country? The names of specific American soldiers were designed to be difficultly located: unalphabetical, unserviced, unranked, unmedaled—just poor slobs who fought against their will and died in a futile and possibly dishonorable war. Who, one might ask, served on the selection committee for that particular “memorial”? Not a single soldier, active duty, retired, or veteran of any war. But lots of the artsy folks Jane (and other Hollywood types) regularly entertained. See http://articles.latimes.com/1993-10-17/entertainment/ca-46534_1_vietnam-veterans-memorial-washington-monument-vietnam-war/3.
The former Vietnam Veterans Against the War, in the meantime (i.e., between 1971 and 1982), magically became Vietnam Veterans of America while maintaining some of the old VVAW leadership. Jan Scruggs, president of and power behind the memorial fund, had been an antiwar activist and declared that the wall was “... a powerful and monumental work, and a weapon against future wars.” He, other antiwar vets (including Kerry), and Fonda made damn sure THEIR view of that war was what would be memorialized. Hart’s statue of three soldiers well off to the side of the “memorial” came later but not without argument from the selection committee which didn’t want to “relieve” the gravity of the wall itself.
Tom Wolfe (Right Stuff, Bonfire of the Vanities, etc.) wrote the best review of the wall which, for some reason, seems unavailable on the net (I could probably pay for a reprint at the Washington Post site); but here’s a hint.
From The Vietnam Wall Controversy, Round 4:
10/13/1982. Tom Wolfe leads anti-art charge.
“Art Disputes War: The Battle of the Vietnam Memorial,” by Tom Wolfe, Washington Post, 10/13/82: B3. “This is the story of art experts and the Vietnam veterans — and of how the veterans asked for a war memorial and wound up with an enormous pit they now refer to as a ‘tribute to Jane Fonda’ . . . . Shouldn’t public sculpture delight the public or inspire the public or at least remind the public of cherished traditions? Nonsense. Why reinforce the bourgeoisie’s pathetic illusions? . . . Veterans like Carhart and Webb were dumbfounded and then outraged. . . . Over the past two months art mullahs of every description have begun a holy war against the addition of the statue.” [SFX]
“Last Chance for the Memorial,” Washington Times, 10/13/82. “There is a discordance between the sophisticated wall and the unsophisticated statue. There is also disharmony between the nay-saying wall and the unequivocally proud flag. . . . And nothing has happened to make Maya Lin’s creation look less like what it suggests to some veterans and some non-combatant citizens: ‘an open grave.’” [SFX]
There’s SO much more—
I think we both know things that overlap and augment - I was strongly involved with the efforts to discover the activities of Jane Fonda and others around her and at one point was named as a witness for her prosecution for treason in 1972. The FBI had built the case, using her propaganda broadcasts from Hanoi as a centerpoint but the Justice Department never went forward. My experience with her was that she was intelligent and hard and focused and had no patience for idlers. She absolutely hated veterans and made that very clear all the time. She was nearly 100% involved with pro-enemy activities and also seemed old to me with short red hair, wrinkles around her mouth and eyes and she was chain-smoker.
On the other hand, Kerry struck me as a dullard and an opportunist. His big moment was when Hubbard was discovered to be lying about his "Vietnam service" (he was actually a flightline mechanic in the States) and he took over the VVAW. His statement to the Congressional Committee was rot based on his listening too much to the lying blowhards of the Winter Soldier event. He was and is a poseur and wouldn't know anything about infantry combat or our service in Vietnam. I spent many, many weekends campaigning against his presidential run, much to the amusement of my family.
I agree that the both of them should have been hanged. It stuns me that they have privileged and powerful positions and the American public has no clue to the enormity of their crimes.
By the way, that dang Women's statue at the Memorial really annoys me: it was put there to satisfy some powerful ladies' groups and it's lousy sculpture. It portrays a mythical event - I never saw any women in Vietnam forward of the main hospitals and dang few in them there. If they wanted to honor the people who saved the lives over there, it should have been statues of a Corpsman/medic, a doctor and a medevac pilot. I owe my life to them.
Semper Fi