We now learn from Jane Fonda’s new autobiography, “My Life So Far,” that her trip to Hanoi in 1972, which had such a profoundly hurtful effect on American soldiers, (and which she now says she regrets), was just an exercise aimed at making her feel better.
Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post notes the delightfully self-transformational quality of Fonda’s visit to North Vietnam:
“If acting ’feeds insecurity,’” writes Yardley, quoting Fonda, “it also feeds self-delusion. When Fonda goes off to protest the Vietnam War, to stand up for the rights of American Indians, to live the Movement life, is she being herself or playing a part? At the end of the war, she says, ’because of the profound changes I’d experienced over the previous five years, I had a new sense of the possibility of personal transformation…’”
Fonda’s much-publicized conversion to Christianity several years ago struck a sympathetic note for me. But she has since taken pains to reassure the world that she is no longer “born again” and her current soul mates are Eve Ensler of “Vagina Monologues” fame and Gloria Steinem. She also “surrounds” herself with young women whom she “counsels.” Scary thought.
She may have apologized for Hanoi, but she is still insufferable: “That sense of oneself as red-hot center of the universe is pretty hard to stomach,” says Yardley.