Jane Fonda And Robert McNamara: Thirty Years On
June 7th, 2005 at 14:30 by C J Davies
hecklerspray had the strangest experience of it’s young life the other day.
Having just been to the Hay-On-Wye literary festival and witnessed an incredible interview with Robert McNamara - former American Defence Secretary, still of colossal intellect despite his eighty-nine years and main subject of masterful documentary The Fog Of War (DVD) - hecklerspray then headed home, stopping off in grim Welsh hellhole Newport on a train diversion. Where Robert McNamara was sat in the station cafe.
Robert McNamara. Former adviser to Kennedy, Nixon and Johnson. Controversial mastermind behind the US Vietnam strategy and architect of political influence. In a train station. In Newport. On a wet Sunday afternoon.
The mind boggles at this. The mind also boggles at the fact that the festival also featured Jane Fonda (DVDs) - famous in the 1970s as ‘Hanoi Jane’ after her antics posing for photographs with an enemy anti-aircraft gun.
The two of them apparently met backstage, where Fonda claims to have developed a new-found admiration for her one-time cultural adversary.
"I cannot imagine how hard it must be for someone who was an architect of the Vietnam War to get to a point where he could say: ‘We made a mistake and we were wrong," Fonda told her assembled audience. "I have to acknowledge that, I have to say thank you to him. You would never find Henry Kissinger saying we were wrong and I am sorry."
She then went back to flogging her autobiography.
Related and recent:
- VIDEO: Jane Fonda Says The C-Word On The Telly
- Jane Fonda A Bit Sorry For Swearing Like A Docker On TV
- Jane Fonda Angry That Bush Threatens Grandchildren
- Jane Fonda: ‘Sorry I Backed The Vietcong’
- Now Jane Fonda Slags Lindsay Lohan Off A Bit Too
- SLACKERJACK - Jane’s Hotel
- Pitt Still Loves Jennifer Aniston
- Jennifer Lopez Vs The Nutcases
June 9th, 2005 at 10:10 pm
Not Nixons defence minister, mate
June 13th, 2005 at 9:50 am
Jane Fonda’s “antics posing for photographs with an enemy anti-aircraft gun” during her 1972 visit to North Vietnam consisted of a series of photos showing her applauding communist soldiers that sang a song to her, and then moments later, first leaning on the gun then seated behind the sights of the gun, Jane Fonda was photographed singing a song back to the soldiers, all according to Fonda in her new book. Fonda also asked the North Vietnamese to allow her to make propaganda broadcasts on Radio Hanoi, the communists gleefully consented, and Fonda made 5-6 broadcasts that were recorded and the transcripts are available. Lastly, the North Vietnamese communists were grateful for Fonda’s assistance in winning the war, a fact that justifies charges of treason, a capital offense in the U.S. with no statute of limitations. Bui Tin, a Colonel in the People’s Army of Vietnam told Wall Street Journal (August 3, 1995, A8) - “Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9:00 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war, and that she would struggle along with us.”