Only if she is in an open casket.
Jane Fonda said she hoped for an open dialogue with veterans after about 50 former military members and supporters protested the actress’s appearance Friday evening at the Weinberg Center for the Arts.
“Whenever possible I try to sit down with vets and talk with them, because I understand and it makes me sad,” Fonda told a relatively full theater, responding to a submitted question. “It hurts me and it will to my grave that I made a huge, huge mistake that made a lot of people think I was against the soldiers.”
In 1972 Fonda visited Hanoi, North Vietnam, where she criticized attacks on the dike system along the Red River. A U.S. investigation later revealed the publicity of these bombings as propaganda. Fonda’s statements and a photograph of her sitting on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft battery outraged many Americans and veterans, leading many to call her “Hanoi Jane” and a “traitor.”
Bob Hartman, an Army veteran who served in Vietnam in 1967 and 1968, said he blamed Fonda for breaking off negotiations among the countries and held her responsible for thousands of American lives.
“She encouraged North Vietnam to pull away from the negotiations table,” he said, holding a sign outside the Court Street parking garage to protest her presence. “She got Americans killed … and she went to Vietnam to advance her husband’s career.”
Socialism is not the Answer 