Jane Fonda Decries Hanoi Jane ‘Myth’ ‘Created by Right-Wingers,’ Palin Popularity ‘Worries Me’

NewsBusters ^ | April 6, 2010 | Brad Wilmouth

[Zakeet]

On Monday’s Larry King Live on CNN, guest Jane Fonda portrayed herself as a victim of a "myth" that was "created" by "right-wingers" about her infamous "Hanoi Jane" visit to Vietnam to protest the Vietnam War. Without specifying what aspect of the "Hanoi Jane" story she considered to be a fallacy, though the "Product Description" at Amazon.com seems to shed some light on what she was referring to, she claimed that author Jerry Lembcke’s new book, "Hanoi Jane: War, Sex, and Fantasies of Betrayal," is "about the myth," and asserted that it is "sad" that some conservatives are "still stuck in the past":

JANE FONDA: No, it's about the myth, you know, why it is that 300 people went to North Vietnam, people, many people before me, why me, why have they created this myth? You know, when I came back from North Vietnam, there was maybe a quarter of an inch of media about it in the New York Times. Nobody made any big deal out of it. It was created, and some people are stuck-

LARRY KING: By critics?

FONDA: By right wingers. There are some people who are like stuck there, you know, they're still stuck in the past. I always want to say, "Get a life," or, you know, "Read what really happened," you know. The myths are now true.

Referring to people who sometimes protest against her, she continued: "But it makes me sad for these people who are stuck because they've not taken the time – if they're going to waste their energy on hatred, they should take the time in finding out what was really true."

The "Product Description" of the book at Amazon.com contends:

Hanoi Jane, the book, deconstructs Hanoi Jane, the myth, to locate its origins in the need of Americans to explain defeat in Vietnam through fantasies of home-front betrayal and the emasculation of the national will-to-war. Lembcke shows th t the expression Hanoi Jane did not reach the eyes and ears of most Americans until five or six years after the end of the war in Vietnam. By then, anxieties about America s declining global status and deteriorating economy were fueling a populist reaction that pointed to the loss of the war as the taproot of those problems. Blaming the antiwar movement for undermining the military s resolve, many found in the imaginary Hanoi Jane the personification of their stab-in-the back theories.

Ground zero of the myth was the city of Hanoi itself, which Jane Fonda had visited as a peace activist in July 1972. Rumors surrounding Fonda s visits with U.S. POWs and radio broadcasts to troops combined to conjure allegations of treason that had cost American lives. That such tales were more imagined than real did not prevent them from insinuating themselves into public memory, where they have continued to infect American politics and culture.

Hanoi Jane is a book about the making of Hanoi Jane by those who saw a formidable threat in the Jane Fonda who supported soldiers and veterans opposed to the war they fought, in the postcolonial struggle of the Vietnamese people to make their own future, and in the movements of women everywhere for gender equality.

When asked by host King what she thought of Sarah Palin, after asserting that "she should not be a politician, in my opinion," and that it is "sad when someone says I'm going to run for office and they can't answer basic questions, you know, about the world, about what they read, about history," the left-wing actress concluded that Palin’s popularity "worries me, frankly."

Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Monday, April 5, Larry King Live on CNN:

[ETL]

Even the low life Ted Turner saw you for the USA hating whore you are...

He knew who and what she was. That was probably why he married her.

From David Horowitz's FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org:
PROFILE: TED TURNER

• Successful businessman and founder of CNN
• Major funder of leftist causes and politicians
• Calls himself a “socialist at heart”
• Admirer of Fidel Castro

  Details at:
  http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2004
  _______________________________________________________

  Interview

  Ted Turner Talks Politics, Fidel Castro and Jane Fonda With O'Reilly

  Wednesday, December 10, 2008

  [excerpt]

  O'REILLY: Fidel Castro, do you admire the man?

  TURNER: Yes.

  O'REILLY: Now he has murdered people. He's imprisoned people. There are political prisoners now. He won't let his people use the Internet. Nobody can use that. And you admire the guy?

  TURNER: Well, I admire certain things about him. He's trained a lot of doctors, and they've got one of the best educational systems in the developing world. And you know, he's still popular with a lot of people down there. He's unpopular…

  O'REILLY: But he's a killer. He's a killer. He's a guy who…

  TURNER: But that has never, to my knowledge, that's never been proven. I mean…

  O'REILLY: He's executed political prisoners. I mean, he enslaves people who don't see it the way he sees it. Come on. He's a dictatorship. If you admire him, then why wouldn't you admire Mussolini? I mean, what's the difference? Mussolini put people back to work. There was order. The educational system was fine. See, I'm not getting this. This is what I don't understand about it.

  TURNER: Well, OK, well, if you don't see the difference between Castro and Mussolini, you know, then you know, I likened some aspects of FOX News to the Nazis, so, I mean, you know, it works both ways.

  O'REILLY: But you just admitted to me that that wasn't a very good thing to do and wasn't accurate.

  TURNER: Hey, listen, I didn't say I wanted to live in Cuba. And I didn't say that I was buddy buddies with Fidel Castro. I just said that I respected certain things that he's done.

  O'REILLY: All right, well…

  TURNER: What's wrong with that?

  O'REILLY: Well, you said respect the man. And I just don't — I can't possibly see how you could do that, but…

  TURNER: Of course not.

  O'REILLY: Now I asked this question through one of my producers to Ms. Fonda. And I'm going to ask it to you because by reading your book, it struck me that the Vietnam experience changed you. I'm saying to myself, you know, Turner comes into the Vietnam era, conservative guy, pretty much traditional guy, it changes him.

  TURNER: Yes.

  O'REILLY: It changes him. And now he's a very liberal guy. So I asked Ms. Fonda, didn't it ever bother that you after all your activism and getting America out of Vietnam, which it subsequently did in the mid '70s, that 3 million human beings were slaughtered by the people that you were lionizing, the North Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge Communists who wouldn't have been slaughtered if we stayed. And their skulls were stacked on top of each other. And I never heard from you, Jane Fonda. And I never heard a word from Ted Turner about that. And that, to me, is a good question.

  TURNER: You've got me. I didn't really think about it. You know, it didn't make the news very much.

  O'REILLY: No, it didn't. And you had a vehicle that you could have had — the revisionist history is what I'm worried about here. I think America's a noble nation. I think we've made mistakes. I think we tried to have freedom in Vietnam for the South Vietnamese. Unfortunately, the government was corrupt. I don't think that was a venal, terrible thing to do. I think we were trying to protect people there.

  http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,465124,00.html
  _______________________________________________________

  

  CNN founder Ted Turner with then wife, "Hanoi Jane" Fonda

[Niteranger68]

Sorry Jane...ugly and stupid are worthless traits.

[y6162]

Jane sits atop a mythical anti aircraft gun in Hanoi aiming at mythical American airmen.

[Clemenza]

I’ll drop a duece on her grave.....

Get in line.

[Hoodat]

[Eric in the Ozarks]

We know exactly what you are, Jane.

[rosco coltrain]

This traitorous b&#tch should have been taken into custody then executed the minute she stepped back on US soil.

[Repeat Offender]

I think we should just save everyone some time and use a septic tank for her grave.

That's about the nicest thing I could think of too.

[ETL]

And now for a breath of fresh air...

Bob Hope's 1967 Christmas show
Bear Cat base camp, S. Vietnam, December, 1967; John Olson, ©Stars and Stripes

_____________________________________________

FOXNEWS.COM HOME: YOUR WORLD W/ NEIL CAVUTO
Transcript: American Beauty
August 12, 2005

NEIL CAVUTO, HOST: When you think of Hollywood legends or at least when I think of Hollywood legends, my next guest really comes to mind. She's a Golden Globe winner, she's a Broadway star, and did I mention, she is — oh gosh — she is a knockout. On Saturday [August 13, 2005], actress Raquel Welch will be honored by the Vietnam Veterans of America for entertaining the troops with Bob Hope back in 1968.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,165586,00.html

[DejaJude]

I think we should just save everyone some time and use a septic tank for her grave.
That's about the nicest thing I could think of too.

Nope, she should be stuffed and mounted on an anti aircraft gun in that pose and displayed in the Museum of the Revolution in Hanoi, Vietnam. That would be the most fitting tribute to her.

[TexasRepublic]

Some myth. The pictures don’t lie.

[magslinger]

More efficient, but not as satisfying.

[ETL]

she should be stuffed and mounted on an anti aircraft gun in that pose and displayed in the Museum of the Revolution in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Photograph of Madame Binh and Jane Fonda
Displayed in the Women’s Museum, Saigon, May 28, 2004.
______________________________________________

JOHN KERRY BEING HONORED, BY COMMUNISTS, FOR HIS CONTRIBUTION TO THEIR VICTORY OVER UNITED STATES

Source for both:
http://www.tinyvital.com/Misc/KerryHonoredByCommunists2.htm

[Old Teufel Hunden]

Thank you.

[Ro_Thunder]

Hanoi Jane in front of anti-aircraft artillery. It's hard to paint this in a positive light, seriously. Visiting the enemy, checking out their weapons, and applauding them? Yeah - it was a misunderstanding. (/sarc)

[NonValueAdded]

WWTS?
What Would Tonk Say?

[jazusamo]

Hanoi Jane is getting senile. There were many in the Vietnam War that weren't right-wingers.

[DejaJude]

Yeah, I know. Both Kerry and Fonda should be stuffed and displayed there. Besides, I don’t want any part of them to be put in American soil. Although, I’d be willing to let Kerry be buried in France.

[ETL]

Plus all the other things she did and said to undermine the U.S. military and help the North Vietnamese win. And she’s still a revolutionary communist today, despite the BS about her ‘apologizing’ and becoming a Christian, etc. She’s on the list of supporters of the World Can’t Wait movement. WCW is a Maoist-revolutionary movement established by the Revolutionary Communist Party in 2005. In 2009 she brought her anti-US military roadshow from the Vietnam war era to Broadway. It was called FTA for “F The Army”. See my earlier posts for more on both.

[VeniVidiVici]

I wouldn’t give that washed-up, old hag Fonda the privilege of my urine on her grave.