Here’s another e-mail, from reader W.W., about Jane Fonda’s plans to tour the U.S. in a vegetable oil-fueled bus to protest the war in Iraq (See “But She Won’t Be Sitting Atop a Suicide Bomb,” July 26, and the Mailbag for July 27.):
“Early on, Jane was on a TV talk program when she said that the Vietnam war was just an internal revolution, and ‘no one helped us with our revolution.’ The real blame falls on the gutless officials who did not arrest Jane for treason as soon as she landed.”
Sigh–Jane shouldn’t have dropped out of Vassar before taking a history course or two. There she might have learned that our friends (back then!) the French gave us plenty of help. Does the word “Lafayette” ring a bell from high school, Jane?
As for what Jane did, however, posing next to an anti-aircraft gun aimed at U.S. planes and gushing about a Hanoi bee ballet sounded–justifiably–treasonous to the American men and women who were laying down their lives for their country and to the American prisoners of war tortured in stifling cells a few blocks from where Jane cavorted with her Marxist hosts. But it would have been hard to prove in a court of law that those actions quite amounted to the crime of treason, technically speaking, which is undoubtedly why U.S. authorities hesitated to arrest her. I think what she did was unpardonable (although she did apologize), but I can understand why she wasn’t prosecuted.
Speaking of Jane, here’s a terrific column about her from Kathleen Parker for Town Hall:
“[H]er newest foray into antiwar territory feels like a cartoonish parody of her former self. Jane Fonda playing Jane Fonda. In her newest version of Me, Myself and I, Fonda will segue from book tour to antiwar tour via a cross-country trip on a bus that runs on vegetable oil. Slick. But is it canola?”
The nice thing about Kathleen’s column is that she plugs our own efforts at the IWF to bring democracy and equal rights to Iraqi women, especially since the latest version of the Iraqi draft constitution lets traditional sharia law trump women’s rights–which could mean forced marriages and divorces and stoning for adultery.
Writes Parker:
“Before the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Iraqi men and women were almost equal. Except for those chosen especially for rape by Saddam’s sons and their henchmen, women faced only the same tortures as men. Now, they may face diminished status under a constitution that, as proposed, contradicts democratic principles of equality and freedom….
“The Iraqi parliament has until Aug. 15 to adopt a draft constitution, which then faces a nationwide referendum by mid-October. If the women lose, we all lose.
“Now there’s a cause for feminists and Fondas alike. If we want to end the war in Iraq, a sound, woman-friendly constitution is at least part of the answer. To that end, Michelle Bernard, the IWF senior vice president who runs the democratic outreach program to Iraqi women, says she?d be happy to accept Fonda?s check.”
And as for me, all will be forgiven, Jane.