Hanoi Jane -- Ms. Outlaw

Jane is in the middle of controversy yet again. The recent "brouhaha" has arisen because Jane is listed in a book put out by Ladies Home Journal "100 Most Important Women of the Century." Piggy vets are running an anti-commie Jane campaign to beat the band. If you do a search for Jane Fonda on the internet you'll find all the reactionary veteran sites your heart desires. Sites calling her a traitor, bi$#h and an airhead ingenue used by the commies. Not to mention numerous porno sites linked with her name. The logic of these vets: if you can't make a woman shut up, objectify her!

I tell you, after researching and looking at these sites I love Jane Fonda even more because of how she pisses off reactionary hawkish vets. Because she is a woman as well as a past-NLF sympathizer makes it all the more painful for these sexist flag wavers. Of course, I don't just uphold her because these folks hate her. What is that quote about my enemy's enemies are my friends. No matter what she has done since 1972, no one can take away (even if she'd like to) how she gave heart to the anti-war movement with her defeatist stand. Her FTA (Fuck the Army) tour in Vietnam with Donald Sutherland helped fire the GI resistance movement.

You can't put Jane in a neat little package and put a label on her; no doubt she has been contradictory. I mean TED TURNER!!! What was she thinking!!! She backed off some of her radical-ness in a big way in the 70's, some say capitulated, promoting "fitness" videos, apologizing to veterans on the Barbara Walters show. But Jane Fonda's legacy is more than one of revolutionary gone fluff. She is an influential figure who continues to make her progressive mark on history.

Her film career is marked with progressive politics with very few exceptions. The only other film she produced beside the FTA tour, "Old Gringo" in 1988 is very sympathetic to the Mexican people during the Revolution. She actively was 'No Nukes' in early 80's. More recently she has been supporting women's movements in Africa and the Middle East to put an end to Female Genital Mutilation. And even though she has recently been quoted as saying she has been "saved" she's also teamed up with a condom company to promote safer sex to counter the dangerous christian "abstinence" crap for teens.

Interestingly enough Jane had bulimia for many years before she got into the fitness business. She found health for herself in the aerobics she promoted. She also made a small fortune in the mean-time and led the fitness craze in the 80's.

Fonda has made many bold statements in her life, many she has apologized for later. Women in this society get a lot of heat for being unrepentant women. She's repented some, but she can't keep her mouth shut. "You can do one of two things; just shut up, which is something I don't find easy, or learn an awful lot very fast, which is what I tried to do."

I bought (used) the Ladies Home Journal Book "100 most Important Women of the 20th Century. I was curious to see who else was on the list, how the LHJ characterized them, etc. Emma Goldman is in there and believe it or not (I was amazed) Jiang Qing is in there. Of course what they write about her and the Chinese Cultural Revolution is total BS. But there she is, with photos of her on trial in 1980. Now, Jane is no Jiang, but Jiang was a fighter for a revolutionary united front that would have had room for Jane Fondas. Jane could have been a righteous revolutionary but she is still a good liberal. In closing, a section from her infamous radio broadcast:

Hotel Especen; Hanoi-Vietnam, 22 August 1972-"This is Jane Fonda. During my two week visit in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, I've had the opportunity to visit a great many places and speak to a large number of people from all walks of life-workers, peasants, students, artists and dancers, historians, journalists, film actresses, soldiers, militia girls, members of the women's union, writers."

"ÉI cherish the memory of the blushing militia girls on the roof of their factory, encouraging one of their sisters as she sang a song praising the blue sky of Vietnam-these women, who are so gentle and poetic, whose voices are so beautiful, but who, when American planes are bombing their city, become such good fighters. I cherish the way a farmer evacuated from Hanoi, without hesitation, offered me, an American, their best individual bomb shelter while US bombs fell near by. The daughter and I, in fact, shared the shelter wrapped in each other's arms, cheek against cheek. It was on the road back from Nam Dinh, where I had witnessed the systematic destruction of civilian targets-schools, hospitals, pagodas, the factories, houses, and the dike system. As I left the United States two weeks ago, Nixon was again telling the American people that he was winding down the war, but in the rubble-strewn streets of Nam Dinh, his words echoed with sinister (words indistinct) of a true killer. And like the young Vietnamese woman I held in my arms clinging to me tightly-and I pressed my cheek against hers-I thought, this is a war against Vietnam perhaps, but the tragedy is America's."

"One thing that I have learned beyond a shadow of a doubt since I've been in this country is that Nixon will never be able to break the spirit of these people; he'll never be able to turn Vietnam, north and south, into a neo-colony of the United States by bombing, by invading, by attacking in any way. One has only to go into the countryside and listen to the peasants describe the lives they led before the revolution to understand why every bomb that is dropped only strengthens their determination to resist."