It is a common complaint about modern American culture in particular that it mistakes fame for importance. Earlier this year, the American ABC network screened a program on the 100 most important women of the 20th century. One of the women to be honoured was Jane Fonda.
Why Jane Fonda you might ask? After all, she is merely an actor, the child of a famous actor, who made some films, some workout videos and married media billionaire Ted Turner. She has lived a deeply privileged life, and she is famous, but what has she done that makes her a great woman?
Well, she was involved in the anti-Vietnam War movement. But so were many, many thousands of people. But she was famous and in the anti-War movement. Again, so were others.
But Jane Fonda used her fame in a very particular way. At the height of the Vietnam War she went to Hanoi and publicly paraded her support for the North Vietnam regime and people and accused American PoWs of being war criminals. Some of those PoWs remember Ms Fonda very well. They have reason to. Because of Fonda some of them never came home.
Larry Carrigan spent six years in the "Hanoi Hilton" as a PoW, the first three of which he was listed as missing in action. His wife lived on faith that he was still alive. One day, his group got the cleaned-fed-clothed routine in preparation for a "peace delegation" visit. They devised a plan to get word to the world that they were alive. Each man secreted a tiny piece of paper, with his Social Security number on it, in the palm of his hand. When paraded before Fonda, she walked the line, shaking each man's hand and asking little encouraging snippets like, "Aren't you sorry you bombed babies?".
Believing this had to be an act, they each palmed her their sliver of paper. She took them all without missing a beat. At the end of the line and once the camera stopped rolling, to the shocked disbelief of the PoWs, she turned to the officer in charge and handed him the little pile of notes. Three men died from the subsequent beatings. Carrigan was almost number four.
Other former PoWs have similar memories of Ms Fonda. Carrigan was one of a group who attempted to have Ms Fonda charged for her actions, but her fame and position have so far protected her.
Another former PoW, when asked what he thought of Jane Fonda and the anti-war movement, replied that he held Joan Baez's husband in very high regard, for he thought the war was wrong, burned his draft card and went to prison in protest. If the other anti-war protesters took this same route, it would have brought our judicial system to a halt and ended the war much earlier, and there wouldn't be as many on that sombre black granite wall called the Vietnam Memorial. That, the former PoW added, was democracy, that was the American way.
Jane Fonda, the former PoW continued, chose to be a traitor, and went to Hanoi, wore their uniform, propagandized for the communists, and urged American soldiers to desert. After her heroes -- the North Vietnamese communists -- took over South Vietnam, they systematically murdered 80,000 South Vietnamese political prisoners. May their souls rest on her head forever, he added.
The moral choice was not being for or against the Vietnam War -- there were worthy values which led either way. The moral choice was what you then did. And even in a postmodern world, actions speak louder than words. Or attitudes.
Jane Fonda was allegedly included in the 100 great women for "bringing fitness to the masses". There is, and was, nothing great about Jane Fonda. Yet, it appears fame itself is enough to make her so in the eyes of American TV.
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