The Right Can’t Let Go Of Its Hatred For Jane Fonda
They can’t let it go. What about the Christian belief in redemption? No matter how many times Jane Fonda says she’s sorry, they can’t let it go.
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[su_thin_right_skyscraper_ad]Jane Fonda said she hoped for an open dialogue with veterans after about 50 former military members and supporters protested the actress’s appearance Friday evening at the Weinberg Center for the Arts.
“Whenever possible I try to sit down with vets and talk with them, because I understand and it makes me sad,” Fonda told a relatively full theater, responding to a submitted question. “It hurts me and it will to my grave that I made a huge, huge mistake that made a lot of people think I was against the soldiers.”…
Bob Hartman, an Army veteran who served in Vietnam in 1967 and 1968, said he blamed Fonda for breaking off negotiations among the countries and held her responsible for thousands of American lives.
“She encouraged North Vietnam to pull away from the negotiations table,” he said, holding a sign outside the Court Street parking garage to protest her presence. “She got Americans killed … and she went to Vietnam to advance her husband’s career.”
About 50 veterans, many of whom served in Vietnam, held signs saying “Forgive? Maybe. Forget? Never” and waved flags outside the theater for about two hours, occasionally booing people entering the Weinberg Center, including state Sen. Ron Young.
“But those people out there … I’m a lightning rod,” Fonda said. “This famous person goes and does something that looks like I’m against the troops, which wasn’t true, but it looked that way, and I’m a convenient target. So I understand.”
However, Fonda said she did not regret traveling to North Vietnam, saying her time there was “an incredible experience.”
“We feel what she did was so egregious … (she) really cost lives,” said Mike McGowan, a Marine Corps veteran who served as an infantryman in Vietnam from 1968 to 1969.
They didn’t forget, which is understandable, but they didn’t forgive, or they’d move on and engage in dialogue. And, yet, I keep hearing from veterans that they are fighting for our freedoms. That includes the right to disagree with the fight, itself. And if they can’t understand the difference between opposing a war and its promoters, and opposing the troops. It’s time to let this go.
saltydawg77 January 19th, 2015 at 12:38 am
So, I guess that these guys protested Nixon’s proxies for encouraging North Vietnam through “back channels” to pull away from negotiations in Paris in order to defeat Hubert Humphrey.
androphiles January 20th, 2015 at 1:36 am
There’s every possibility our government took advantage of Fonda and her group’s presence over there to misdirect attention from what they were really doing. Why in the world was so much media attention lavished on her? In the last 47 years I never once felt like she owed anyone, much less me, any apology.
Dwendt44 January 19th, 2015 at 1:19 am
Hard to see how a movie actress can have that much influence of a whole country that was very headstrong.
Of course, ‘forgiveness’ only works one way with this crowd.
burqa January 19th, 2015 at 4:13 am
What influence are you talking about?
Jane Fonda has never had much influence on the whole country.
Now everyone give me a moment while I remember Donald Sutherland unzipping that red dress of hers in “Klute.”…..
rg9rts January 19th, 2015 at 4:23 am
You wouldn’t believe what the quasi-nazi US was like then…
red-diaper-baby 1942 January 19th, 2015 at 8:43 am
Yes I would. I was there. Remember Richard Daley and the Democratic Convention in Chicago?
rg9rts January 19th, 2015 at 8:45 am
The whole world is watching…I was overseas…
rg9rts January 19th, 2015 at 4:24 am
These are the same idiots that don’t like O’s tan suit..
Suzanne McFly January 19th, 2015 at 10:54 am
Because 20 people who are still pissed stood out in the rain with signs claiming Fonda is against the troops haven’t forgiven her, doesn’t mean the vast amount of Vietnam vets haven’t gotten past this terrible mistake she made a long time ago.
Detected_as_spam January 19th, 2015 at 5:02 pm
What about draft dodger Hanoi George making communist country Viet Nam a favored trading partner?
androphiles January 20th, 2015 at 1:31 am
I’m a Vietnam vet myself, and I’m really tired of this. What amazes me is people thinking that Jane Fonda had enough clout to cause North Vietnam to do ANYTHING. She was a young girl from a Hollywood family, who hadn’t done much of anything to garner her own fame.
My service brothers died because of our government’s Southeast Asia policy. We never needed to be there and what we did there benefited our country not one bit. If U.S. media hadn’t made so much noise about Jane and the others in her group North Vietnam wouldn’t even have known who she was.