She Was Wrong Then, and She's Wrong Again!

   

It's deja vu for those of us old enough to remember Vietnam, and Jane Fonda is the tour guide for this bad trip in her french-fry-grease-fueled bus. Hanoi Jane has traded in her fatigues for more conservative Chanel suits and transformed herself into Baghdad Jane. The message is the same – America stinks, war is bad, it's better to lose than to fight. Her latest escapade, however, differs from her Vietnam-era antics in two distinct ways.

First, Jane isn't traveling to Baghdad and chumming it up with the mullahs. I wonder why? Could it be that she fears being kidnapped and trapped in an iron-clad birka? After all, Jane Fonda – abortion activist, man-hating feminist that she is – is the embodiment of the “Western” values Islamic terrorists seek to destroy. She may also fear the wrath of the newly-liberated Afghan and Iraqi women. I suspect they would disagree that all war is bad, and may choose to vote Ms. Fonda out of the agony of her life rather than sit idly by as she supports Baathist insurgents seeking to reestablish extremist rule in those two countries.

Second, very few people in the United States are paying her much mind. Ms. Fonda only received press coverage from that other throwback to the 60s, CBS. Leslie Stahl allowed her to vent on her “abuse” by men (Roger Vadim had her recruit other women for threesomes, then dumped her; Tom Hayden, mimicking the welfare-state slaves liberals created via the Great Society, sent Jane out to earn a few million in the movies, lived very well off her income, then dumped her; millionaire Ted Turner traded in 60-year-old Jane for three 20-somethings), then attempt to justify her actions during Vietnam. Apparently, this sparked some idea in Ms. Fonda that she was still relevant, and motivated this latest cross-country sojourn.

According to the late Peter Jennings of ABC News, conservatives are just a bunch of “angry white men,” and Jane Fonda should serve to remind people of why they are angry. Fonda and her ilk castrated our military. They inculcated our society with the belief that the values shared by the Greatest Generation were antiquated, but the values shared by the Lester family in the novel Tobacco Road were “progressive.” They allowed “public education” to become “public indoctrination,” so Americans learn all about rights without learning about responsibility, and people in Indonesia, India and Pakistan speak, read and write English better than kids graduating from Gary, Indiana high schools.

Jane Fonda is a living example that age doesn't always bring wisdom. The 60s are over, dead and buried with the moldering corpse of Jerry Garcia, foot-wide Afros and tie-dyed shirts. And many of us are dancing in the graveyard.

04/20/06 UPDATE: Citing her "excess amount of baggage", She has cancelled her bus trip.