Van E. Harl

STILL PICKING AT THE WOUND

Jane Fonda in North Vietnam: 1972
Jane Fonda has a friendly chat with North Vietnamese Artillery Gunners in Hanoi in 1972I was watching 60 Minutes the other night and one of the top 100 women of the 20th Century was on the show. The ex-Mrs. Ted Turner, better known as Jane Fonda was being interviewed with tears in hers eyes through most of the segment.

According to Fonda she has this issue in her life about pleasing men and this has caused her many of her personal consternations. I can think of a few former US military men she failed to please. As my father the old Master Chief would say, “It sounds like a personal problem, tell it to the chaplain.” Oh wait, those American troops held by the North Vietnamese did not have a chaplain to tell their personal problems to.

So when Miss Jane showed up in Hanoi, the North Vietnamese capitol and denounced the American men fighting in Vietnam and some of the prisoners of war received more beatings and torture (as a direct result of her visit), whose shoulder did these GIs and sailors get to cry on? There was no one. If there was any crying done, it was on the floor of a prison cell as they laid there bleeding and suffering.

There is no doubt that the nation was divided and in crisis in the late 1960 and early 1970s about the Vietnam war. There are bad feelings that will never go away. When you hear that “time heals all wounds” what that really means is eventually everyone involve will be dead, with hopefully no one to carry on the political/moral struggle of whatever the issue was. The only problem is this country is still dealing with issues of the WW I and most of those players are long out of the picture, so I suspect Vietnam will be with use for an indefinite time.

Now I will admit I once attend an anti-Vietnam war meeting when I was in high school. I had an after school job at a pharmacy just outside the gate of Great Lakes Naval base, about 40 miles north of Chicago. As I was leaving work to go home, across the street was a sign saying Jane Fonda was appearing. She was trying to get the sailors from naval base to attend. So I put on my old Army field jacket and went.

It was not the Vietnam issue I was there for it was to see a Hollywood star and I wound up getting to set right next to her on the floor. I had seen a number of her movies, but at that time I knew nothing of her politics and her views on the Vietnam War. It was that Hollywood actress thing that got me in the door, just as the appeal of today’s movie and music industry get people in the door for whatever the current political issue-of-the-day is. I was sixteen and star struck but I got over it.

The reason Fonda was on 60 Minutes was she is plugging her new book. Some of her past writings were exercise work-out books. It would appear her latest literary effort is an emotional work-out book. We get to read how her whole personal-being revolves around her intimate issues with the men in her life and always trying to please them. We even get to read about how she arranged to bring extra women into her first husband’s bedroom. The type of action she condoned going on in her bedroom would appear to be a precursor to the type of action she helped facilitated onto the beaten and bloody bodies of our captured American military members.

With tears running down her face she tells the audience she is sorry for what she did during Vietnam, but in the next moment she starts telling us yet again how wrong that war was. This is a woman who is beyond her time. Her last husband dumped her and she is selling a new book to make money. I would challenge Miss Jane if she is truly sorry for her actions, to donate all the profits of this book to worthy veterans’ causes. I personally work for and donate to, two great veteran related causes and both are Gulf War issues. I know the money from her book would go a long way to help veterans and their families and Fonda could save face since they are Gulf War related and not Vietnam. Aim High Jane, show me the money.