Jane Fonda: ‘Sorry I Backed The Vietcong’

Thirty-three years after posing for a photograph with a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun - a move which led her to be dubbed as ‘Hanoi Jane‘ - actress Jane Fonda has publicly apologised for pissing off most of America.

‘It was a betrayal,’ Fonda told 6O Minutes host Leslie Stahl. ‘It was the largest lapse of judgement I can even imagine.’

The largest lapse of judgement imaginable? Well, Jane, you’re entitled to your opinion … but surely spraying harmless peasant villages with skin-dissolving napalm was slightly more of a boo-boo than your daft little camera antics?

As ever, there’s a very immediate reason for this sudden turnaround. Jane, you see, has a new book to promote:  600-page opus My Life So Far. Hecklerspray warrants a guess that the Barnes & Nobles of Bush-loving Middle America may not have sold quite so many copies were it percieved to be the work of some pansy, ban-the-bomb tree-hugging liberal …

And so Jane says ‘sorry‘.

Hecklerspray can only wonder what happens next. Will the left-wing Hollywood elite of today - Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, Michael Moore - suddenly perform similar screeching U-turns when they’re on the cusp of releasing their leather-bound memoirs?

It’s a depressing thought: Michael Moore sitting down on some chat show in three decades time, shrugging his weighty shoulders and saying: ‘Yes, I do regret that anti-war speech I gave at the Oscars. On second thoughts, Iraq really had it coming, didn’t they? Those sand-dwelling bastards deserved every carpet-bombing our great leader threw at them.’

Maybe Sean Penn will look back at The Assassination Of Richard Nixon - a masterpiece, by the way - and say: ‘that was a bit political, wasn’t it? Sorry about that. You can discover my lighter side in my new autobiography, Still A Bad Boy, available in all good bookstores Monday.’

Doesn’t sound all too likely, does it?

Hecklerspray says: enough of this. We think it’s time for a new Hanoi Jane. Keira Knightley strapping on a Camp X-Ray jumpsuit, anyone? How about Scarlett Johannsen recording a grainy vaguely-threatening video from some far-flung cave in Afghanistan?

Here’s a new hecklerspray competition: send us your best ideas for celebrities in controversial poses and maybe - no promises, but maybe - we’ll get some Photoshop-savvy office junior to fix up your idea (assuming your idea isn’t hopelessly, hopelessly libellous)! Entries to: hecklerspray@gmail.com.

Oh, and Jane? We hope your book does well. At least, we hope it has a longer shelf life than your principles …

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