New at Reason

Tim Cavanaugh | May 12, 2005

She's got a hot new tell-all memoir! She's starring in a hot new comedy, opposite the only actress who is arguably more hated than she is! (Is it too late for the producers to arrange a J.Lo photo opp with the insurgents?) She's loud and proud, full of regrets but twice as feisty! She's Jane Fonda, and Nick Gillespie's swoonin'!

Comments

|5.12.05 @ 5:03PM|#

While I still don't like her, she sure as hell handled that spitting incident in Missouri much more professionally than I would have.

|5.12.05 @ 5:04PM|#

I have it on good authority that Fonda does not, in fact, have a motor in the back of her Honda.

gaius marius|5.12.05 @ 5:54PM|#

would it be wrong to say that, given the revelations of robert mcnamara that he now realizes they totally misconceived the domino theory in vietnam and that the north was actually fighting an antiimperialist war, that jane was really a philosophical precursor to the neoconservative compulsion for freedom, freedom, forever freedom from tyranny?

|5.12.05 @ 5:56PM|#

"She's a feminist who nonetheless largely defined herself in relation to men (her screen legend father, Henry Fonda, first, and then her three ex-husbands); a diehard lefty who became an amazingly successful entrepreneur through her Jane Fonda Workout videos; an exercise guru who was consumed by bulimia and who got breast implants during a midlife crisis; a longtime secularist who converted to Christianity late in life; and so on."

Rather than humanizing her, to me that just makes her sound like a clueless bozo.

|5.12.05 @ 5:58PM|#

Hey gaius, good to see you back from Gitmo. I guess when they realized all they could pin on you was poor capitalization they had to let you out.

|5.12.05 @ 6:01PM|#

Gaius,

You may check out any time you like, but you can never leave. Good to see you back. Stay a while.

|5.12.05 @ 6:02PM|#

Good looking girls just don't hear the words "shut the fuck up" often enough for their own good.

|5.12.05 @ 6:20PM|#

Gaius, how do you explain all the Laotian people that fled their country to live in France, Canada, and the U.S. when communism paid a visit? Was Laos just an exception to an otherwise failed domino theory? Or was it just their imaginations that made them believe the communists came, perhaps some pre-neocon mind control of some kind? Did my girlfriend, most the rest of her family, and a half dozen or so other Laotians (plus family) that I know personally, flee to escape from anti-imperialism?

I guess I'm answering your question with, "yes, it would be wrong to say that..."

R C Dean|5.12.05 @ 6:24PM|#

Yeah, that domino theory really was off base. I mean, no other Southeast Asian country went in for leftist totalitarianism besides Vietnam, right?

|5.12.05 @ 6:33PM|#

Fuck you isildur. I laughed so hard everyone in my office stared me down.

|5.12.05 @ 6:45PM|#

opposite the only actress who is arguably more hated than she is!

Paris Hilton?

|5.12.05 @ 7:01PM|#

Doug,
I'll make a point of telling a good looking girl to shut the fuck up on my way home today. You gotta start somewhere right?

|5.12.05 @ 7:44PM|#

gaius - that was a joke right?

|5.12.05 @ 7:47PM|#

Welcome back, gaius!

|5.12.05 @ 8:29PM|#

Miss Army Recruiting, 1962!

Kevin

|5.12.05 @ 9:19PM|#

Look at that picture. What male person from the entertainment biz does she look like she could be the sister of? I want to see if anyone else is thinking what I am-a narrowing hint in about an hour if no one concurs with me by then.

|5.12.05 @ 9:48PM|#

"In true Gallic fashion, Vadim repaid his debt by billing her the "American Brigitte Bardot," casting her in the title role in the 1968 intergalactic soft-porn stinker Barbarella, and calling her stupid and unfaithful in his sybaritic tell-all, Bardot, Deneuve, and Fonda."

That's one hell of a casting call.

...I've always wanted to make a film, and, coincidently, one of my ex-girlfriends was stupid and unfaithful.

|5.12.05 @ 10:38PM|#

Look at that picture. What male person from the entertainment biz does she look like she could be the sister of? Hint-a pop singer.

|5.12.05 @ 11:03PM|#

She was anti-war but mostly just anti US war due to her loyalty to the commies.

Jane Fonda was at her absolute worst when she refused to join Joan Baez and others in their protest against the Khmer Rouge slaughter and when she also refused to go along with Baez in condemning North Vietnamese savagery when that commie government behaved like commies.

|5.12.05 @ 11:13PM|#

Nick, you might also add to that list "one of the greatest film actors in history". Seven Oscar nominations, two-time winner as Best Actress.

Speaking of which. Almost everyone else I've met who has been drawn to acting has been smart but naive. Folks who choose this pursuit tend to be, IMHO, interested primarily in emotions rather than facts and critical thinking. Often easily swayed by appeals to feeling, regardless of their merit. I don't begrudge them it anymore. Acting is a difficult discipline.

I would, of course, prefer that they stay out of those political issues that require the opposite orientation.

|5.13.05 @ 7:41AM|#

Jane Fonda is an actress. Why are we supposed to care what she thinks about politics now or in the 1960s? Why isn't the hatred toward Fonda directed toward the people who really stabbed South Vietnam in the back - Nixon, Kissinger, McNamara, etc?

|5.13.05 @ 7:54AM|#

Hmmm - yes, you guys are right - the domino theory was valid.

Because, as we all know, after South vietnam fell, the rest of Asia fell under the sway of Communism, which eventually led to the Western Hemisphere falling to Communism, and that is why we currently pay taxes to the Soviet Union.

|5.13.05 @ 10:02AM|#

I was lucky enough to take a college course taught by a former US Ambassador to South Vietnam, and he put forth an interesting spin on the domino theory.

A policy of containment could have worked there, if we had drawn the line in the right place - at the Vietnamese border. By trying to contain communism behind an arbitrary line through the middle of the country, we set ourselves up to fail, and were unable to stop it from advancing not only through South Vietnam, but also in Laos and Cambodia.

Southeast Asia has, for thousands of years, been home to the fault line between a Chinese-influenced sphere, and an Indian-influenced sphere. On modern maps, this fault lines appears as the bordern between Vietnam, and Loas and Cambodia.

So no, those two countries did not fall to the communists because of a domino dynamic, but because our actions in trying to enforce a unrealistic partition caused an internal Vietnamese fight to spill over into its neighbors.

|5.13.05 @ 10:13AM|#

Does anyone else think that she looks like David Bowie in that picture?...Like one of Bowie's "changes" anyway.

|5.13.05 @ 10:27AM|#

Oops. They took that picture down.

|5.13.05 @ 11:37AM|#

Wow, for once I agree with Rick Barton... he seems to have a clearer view of Jane Fonda than he does of the Middle East.

|5.13.05 @ 12:18PM|#

That's an interesting theory, joe - there's no doubt that the 17th Parallel was a conpletely arbitrary boundary line that did not correspond with the historical divisions of Vietnam (Tonkin, Annam, Cochin China) and was fundamentally indefensible to boot. It was certainly a mistake for the US to become so fixated on maintaining South Vietnam as an entity, and a strategy that focused on Laos and Cambodia instead might well have worked.

Ken Hagler|5.13.05 @ 12:35PM|#

To the people who criticized Gaius for saying that North Vietnam was fighting an anti-imperialist war:

It's entirely possible to fight an anti-imperialist war while still being really, really nasty. For that matter, it's also possible to fight a war against imperialism because you want to start some of your _own_ imperialism after you win.

|5.13.05 @ 12:49PM|#

Individual liberty is what's important to me, planethoth, individual liberty.