It's difficult to believe we're still arguing about Jane Fonda.

[Atman]

I just got a post from a FB friend who is usually quite reasonable -- we are usually closely aligned, politically -- but she was aghast that Jane Fonda is going to be honored. I'm not even sure if that part is true, but maybe it is. That damned Obama! Anyway, she said "Men died as a result of her actions. She should not be honored."

I replied that men died as the result of the actions of the other men who sent people to die in Vietnam, in a bullshit war.

No response yet.

[hlthe2b]

1. RWers never seem to rethink/think? anything. Just ruled by reflexive emotions

and, they wonder why we don't respect them.

[phantom power]

2. certain people of a certain age will never *ever* be over "Hanoi Jane"

I don't know if any of them are passing that on to their kids, but I can imagine it rubs off by osmosis if nothing else.

[former9thward]

3. It was a bullshit war but Fonda's actions were BS too.

She allowed herself to be photographed atop an anti-aircraft gun aimed at American planes. That gave inspiration to the people who were actually killing Americans, so yeah, her actions did result in men dying.

[ieoeja]

8. I can't tell you the number of Vietnamese I've met who said they killed Americans because of Fonda's

... inspiration.




If you actually believe what you just wrote, then you're an even bigger idiot than you've led me to believe before.

[former9thward]

12. I doubt you have met any N. Vietnamese.

I have.

[LanternWaste]

22. You have objective evidence, or is that merely another allegation?

"That gave inspiration to the people who were actually killing Americans..."

You have objective evidence supporting your premise, or is that merely another allegation?

[angryvet]

4. That award was given in I think 1993

anyway it was a long time ago. Send your friend the link to Snopes.

[HughBeaumont]

5. Americans are still using Cold War/Red Scare terms to describe Democrats. In 2016.

While we're fishing for things that are difficult to believe . . .

You would think the people who remembered the Red Scare and still think in "Reds under the bed" terms are like Liberace fans . . . either dead or dying. But I still see the (used as) snarl terms "commie", "SoSHUList", "Marxist", "comrade", "Statist", etc., etc. thrown around by people of all ages. It's seriously as astounding as the bizarre Anarcho-Capitalists that live in the universe where Reagan and Bewsh were "statists", Hitler was a lefty, America isn't right wing ENOUGH and being hyper-right wing will solve everything.

[Atman]

7. ^^^ Couldn't have said it better myself.

So I won't try.

[Yavin4]

6. We just made a major trade pact with Vietnam, but can't forgive Jane Fonda n/t

[Human101948]

11. Well they have to have something to throw at us to counter Nixon and...

Watergate, and sabotaging the Vietnam Peace Talks, and Haldeman, and John Mitchell, and G. Gordon Liddy, and Spiro Agnew, and six added years of draftees dying in Vietnam, and much, much more.

[1939]

23. Nixon did slowly wind down the war.

When I got there in 1972 (second tour), the US facilities were like ghost towns. I spent two nights in an almost deserted Pleiku compound and it was lonely as all get out. Long Binh was just an bunch of empty buildings with the doors banging in the wind. The almost peace treaty in late 1972 (which became a reality in Jan 1973) plus the end of the draft totally knocked the Vietnam issue out of McGovern's hand.

[Human101948]

27. Sounds spooky...

But we do know now that Nixon actually prolonged the war.

By the time of the election in November 1968, LBJ had evidence Nixon had sabotaged the Vietnam war peace talks - or, as he put it, that Nixon was guilty of treason and had "blood on his hands".
The BBC's former Washington correspondent Charles Wheeler learned of this in 1994 and conducted a series of interviews with key Johnson staff, such as defence secretary Clark Clifford, and national security adviser Walt Rostow.

After the Viet Cong's Tet offensive, White House doves persuaded Johnson to end the war
Johnson loathed Senator Bobby Kennedy but the tapes show he was genuinely devastated by his assassination
He feared vice-president Hubert Humphrey would go soft on Vietnam if elected president
The BBC's Charles Wheeler would have been under FBI surveillance when he met administration officials in 1968
In 1971 Nixon made huge efforts to find a file containing everything Johnson knew in 1968 about Nixon's skulduggery
But by the time the tapes were declassified in 2008 all the main protagonists had died, including Wheeler.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21768668

[MuseRider]

9. I have a bunch of

teabagger friends. They go off on her every chance they get. It is very odd. I don't say much to them because quite a few of them suffered while waiting for their husbands or boyfriends or brothers to come home and several of them did not. At this point I just let that one go. Jane has done well for herself and I doubt she hears much of it anymore, or at least it is so old that it rolls right off her back.

It is so strange to me that they settled on that and never in a million years would have questioned why they had to go there and got angry with them that really sent them in harms way.

Those kind of minds I don't understand and say little about usually because I never had to be in that position.

Still it seems odd.

[LiberalEsto]

14. Don't they recognize the phrase Get Over It?

After all, they've used it plenty themselves.

[Human101948]

18. I recently had an epiphany when I read that the POW-MIA issue was a way of

turning the conversation around from the God awful waste of money and lives (Vietnamese lives especially) and making the poor ol' USA the victim of those nasty ol' North Vietnamese. It hadn't ever occurred to me before but it is the M.O.of the right wingers to portray themselves as the victims no matter what--

I told the story in the first chapter of my 2014 book The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan: how Richard Nixon invented the cult of the “POW/MIA” in order to justify the carnage in Vietnam in a way that rendered the United States as its sole victim.

It began, as cultural historian H. Bruce Franklin has documented, with an opportunistic shift in terminology. Downed pilots whose bodies were not recovered—which, in the dense jungle of a place like Vietnam meant most pilots—had once been classified “Killed in Action/Body Unrecovered.” During the Nixon years, the Pentagon moved them into a newly invented “Missing in Action” column. That proved convenient, for, after years of playing down the existence of American prisoners in Vietnam, in 1969, the new president suddenly decided to play them up. He declared their treatment, and the enemy’s refusal to provide a list of their names, violations of the Geneva Conventions—the better to paint the North Vietnamese as uniquely cruel and inhumane. He also demanded the release of American prisoners as a precondition to ending the war.

http://washingtonspectator.org/the-story-of-the-other-racist-flag/

[JEB]

20. I think many of these cretins hate her

because she was a woman with an informed opinion. They hate all women who have the gall to have their own mind.

[winstars]

10. The only thing I could find was she is getting the Coolidge Award in Brookline MA???

jeeze, these wing nuts need to get a life...

Coolidge Award?


Yeah, THANKS OBAMA!!!

LOL

[KingCharlemagne]

13. I thought George H.W. Bush boasted that we had kicked the

Vietnam Syndrome back in 1990 or thereabouts (after Shocking and Awful, v. 1.0)?



Tell her if she's aghast that Jane Fonda is being honored, she should not watch Jane Fonda. It's really that simple. Or you could tell her that Cheney didn't go because he claimed he had "other priorities" and ask whether that comment also makes her aghast. (I'll wager it doesn't.)

[leftyladyfrommo]

15. I like Jane Fonda

She made a big mistake and she admits it. She was also very young at the time and all the war protests and stuff made kids crazy back then. We got a little carried away.

That was 50 years ago. Get over it. She is a great actress and she has made up for what she did a thousand times over.

[GoCubsGo]

16. You should add that if Jane was a Republican,

her actions would have been written off as "a youthful indiscretion." Just like Dumbya's drinking, drug use and military desertion.

[MyOwnPeace]

24. Drinking, drug use, etc??????

Are you not honoring our "Commander-in-Chief?"

My Gawd, what F**king hypocrites these people are!

You nailed it, friend - dead on!

[GoCubsGo]

29. IOKIYAAR

It's OK if you are a Republican.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

19. How many U.S. troops died because of what Jane Fonda did?

How many were killed, maimed, or taken prisoner because of what LBJ, Nixon, McNamara and Kissinger did?

[yeoman6987]

28. I dread the day she dies. It's going to be ugly

And if you mention how horrible they are, they'll just mention a conservative who died that was made hay of. I wish all deaths were just thought of as sad and not political.

[Rex]

21. How did men die from her actions? I've always been a little murky on that one detail.

What is it she supposedly did? I know she went to North Vietnam, but what did she do that compromised our troops?

[HughBeaumont]

25. Geez they act like she committed high treason or something.

You know, like the Reagan Administration did with Iran Contra.

Or started two ginned-up wars on sovereign nations based on non-existing "evidence". Oh and then advocated the use of torture and got away with it (war crimes, last I checked).

You know, like the Bush Administration did.

[catnhatnh]

26. You want a Villain who caused thousands of US troops to die Needlessly?

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/08/12/george-will-confirms-nixons-vietnam-treason

Nixon's newly revealed records show for certain that in 1968, as a presidential candidate, he ordered Anna Chennault, his liaison to the South Vietnam government, to persuade them to refuse a cease-fire being brokered by President Lyndon Johnson.

Nixon's sabotage of the Vietnam peace talks was confirmed by transcripts of FBI wiretaps. On November 2, 1968, LBJ received an FBI report saying Chernnault told the South Vietnamese ambassador that "she had received a message from her boss: saying the Vietnamese should "hold on, we are gonna win."

Johnson had it all but wrapped it. With a combination of gentle and iron-fisted persuasion, he forced the leaders of South Vietnam into an all-but-final agreement with the North. A cease-fire was imminent, and Humphrey’s election seemed assured.

More, ending with:In other words, Clifford told LBJ that the country couldn’t handle the reality that its president was a certifiable traitor, eligible for legal execution. Final cost 20K US KIA...100K US WIA

[Atman]

30. After some Googling, I found it was pure b.s.

What it was actually about was a Barbara Walters show about 100 influential women. Fonda was on the list. Somehow it turned into a FB meme about Obama feting JaneFonda for her traitorous actions during the Vietnam war. I pointed this out to my friend, who promptly unfriended me for not accepting others "opinions." Since when are FACTS just opinions?

[Odin2005]

31. Some people seem to be stuck mentally in the 70s.

[JHB]

32. How exactly did men die because of her actions?

I was a very little kid when she went over there, and I'm not particularly sympathetic to her, but there's an entire cottage industry built around despising her, just like the parallel industries around John Kerry and Dan Rather.

I'm a little unclear how her actions resulted in additional American deaths.