-Caveat Lector-
Advocacy And Intelligence Index
For Prisoners Of War/Missing In Action, Inc.
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Bob Necci and Andi Wolos
THE POW/MIA E-MAIL NETWORK (c)
aiijun19.99d
When Jane Spoke Out
June 16, 1999
ANOTHER HONOR FOR JANE FONDA: At its national convention in
Washington, DC, next week, the American Association of University Women will
bestow its new Speaking Out for Justice Award on the famous actress and
aerobics queen. She is being hailed, the AAUW says, as "a committed activist
who champions the environment, human rights, and the empowerment of women and
girls."
To judge from the AAUWs two-page biography of its honoree, Fonda has
also
championed anti-gang efforts in California, rural villagers in Tanzania,
student theatrical work in Georgia, and open-space preservation in Montana.
The bio mentions the Oscar she won for her role in Klute, her "books,
cookbooks, and videos," her work on preventing teenage pregnancy, and the
Fonda Family Foundation, which promotes "gender, racial, and environmental
justice." It talks about the children's camp she used to run, it lists the
boards of directors she serves on, and it even has something to say about her
roles in The China Syndrome and 9 to 5.
But the AAUW document leaves a few things out. There is no mention of
Barbarella, for instance. Or of Ted Turner. Or of Jim Jones and his People's
Temple cult, which Fonda praised—a few months before the mass suicide in
Guyana—as "the church I relate to most" for its "sense of what life is all
about." Above all, the AAUW makes no reference to what was surely the most
dramatic illustration of the lengths this "committed activist" has been
willing to go in support of her ideals.
I am looking at a picture that ran in the New York Times on Sunday,
July
16, 1972. The photo shows Fonda clapping, with a wide grin on her face and
three cameras around her neck, as she watches a helmeted soldier operate an
antiaircraft gun. Six or seven other men, most of them in uniform, can be
seen as well.
The picture was taken in Southeast Asia. Fonda had flown over to
assist
the war effort—the North Vietnamese war effort. The rocket launcher she was so
gleefully applauding was used to shoot down US pilots. Fonda had come to
Hanoi to provide aid and comfort to a vicious dictatorship at war with the
United States, and specifically to assist in demoralizing American
prisoners of war. In a series of broadcasts for Radio Hanoi, Fonda
denounced "US imperialism," praised the valor of North Vietnamese, and
urged American GIs to disobey orders.
"I'm speaking particularly to the US servicemen," she said in one
broadcast. "I don't know what your officers tell you . . . but [your]
weapons are illegal and . . . the men who are ordering you to use these
weapons are war
criminals according to international law. In the past, in Germany and Japan,
men who committed these kinds of crimes were tried and executed."
Fonda's North Vietnam propaganda tour is rarely spoken of today. It is
considered churlish to bring it up, a sign that one is ideologically stunted,
a rigid Cold Warrior unwilling to let bygones be bygones.
But where is the integrity in giving Fonda a "Speaking Out for
Justice"
award without acknowledging what she said and did at the most outspoken
moment of her life? Fonda's behavior in 1972 was horrible, no less for its
disloyalty
than for its cruelty. She did more than applaud North Vietnam's antiaircraft
artillery. She also climbed into the gunner's seat, donned an enemy helmet,
and peered through the gunsight—"as if," Fred Cherry, a POW whose F-105 had
been blown out of the sky by just such a weapon, would later say, "she was
attempting to shoot down an American aircraft. . . . It was very upsetting
knowing an American celebrity was doing that kind of thing."
Even that wasn't the worst of it. POWs were tortured for refusing to
meet
with Fonda and pose for propaganda shots with her. Navy Captain David
Hoffman was hung by his broken arm from a hook in the ceiling until he
agreed to take part. Michael Benge, a civilian POW, was forced to kneel on
a concrete floor, arms extended, with a heavy metal rebar laid across his
hands; every time his arms sagged from the weight, he was whipped with a
bamboo cane.
Later, when the POWs came home and told what they had suffered in
Hanoi's
prison camps, Fonda called them "hypocrites and liars."
So far as I am aware, she has never apologized for that slander. Nor
for
championing a Communist victory in Southeast Asia. Nor for denouncing Joan
Baez in 1979, when the former antiwar activist asked Fonda to join her in
condemning the Communists' massive human-rights violations.
She did say—once—that she was sorry for the "men who were in Vietnam
who I
hurt." That was in 1988, when veterans' protests in New England were delaying
production of a movie she was making. Fonda went on 20/20 to tell Barbara
Walters that she regretted having been "thoughtless and careless"—but
insisted that she had nothing against the soldiers she had called war
criminals and liars. "My intentions were never to hurt them or make their
situation worse."
Jane Fonda was 34 in 1972. Her decision to abet the totalitarians who
were
engaged in killing her fellow-Americans was not an adolescent whim. It was
an adult choice, and it was beneath contempt. And now she is to be honored for
"speaking out for justice?" What can the American Association of University
Women be thinking?
Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for the Boston Globe.
His e-mail address is
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
The AAUWs e-mail address is: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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