The photograph incident is the one that I'm interested, so let's look at that according to your source.
Nothing is more emblematic of Jane Fonda’s trip to Hanoi—nothing has caused her to be more justly scorned—than the photographs (there are several, taken moments apart) of a blissful Fonda sitting atop a 37 mm North Vietnamese antiaircraft gun surrounded by reporters and a gun crew. In the version we used on the cover of "Aid and Comfort," Fonda is looking through the gun sight at an imaginary American plane, her face ecstatic, her hands folded almost in prayer. If there was anything about her trip to Hanoi that Fonda needed to lie about, it is this photo op.
This is important, and strikes me as being anti-American to a particularly worrying extent. Gleefully looking through the sites of a AA gun "at imaginary American planes" gives me the impression that she's not just innocently anti-war, but
anti-American. Just one problem: I can't find such a photograph. Everything I've been able to uncover on Google Image Search just shows the photographs where she's listening to others sing, singing herself, and her hands are either clasped in her lap or up near her face in delight while the translator (according to her) translates the pro-liberty lyrics. If anybody can provide this photograph clearly showing her looking through the sites I'd appreciate it. If this photo exists, that would shatter most illusions of her meeting with enemy civilians in order to demonstrate that they're people too, which makes complete sense if you're anti-war. It's a lot of what being anti-war is about.
So she does: According to her memoir, she arrived at Hanoi’s airport. Her hosts briefly went over the itinerary for her visit. "I noticed that the trip to an antiaircraft installation is still on the agenda for the last day, despite my message [a "pretrip letter"] from Los Angeles saying I was not interested in military installations. I tell them that I don’t want to keep that visit on the agenda."
Does such a letter even exist? No evidence in her autobiography is provided to support its existence.
It's really just her word versus the word of others. Concluding that she made it up is mind reading, which, sadly, a lot of this section of your article consists of.
In fact, when her itinerary was published in a Congressional Hearing Report [which we reprinted in full in Aid and Comfort], there was no entry that scheduled a visit to any antiaircraft installation. A reasonable person would conclude that she made up the entire story of her "pretrip" demurral, along with so much else.
No, not a "reasonable person," but one who has already decided on the narrative they want to believe.
And even though she claims to have noticed the itinerary item practically from the moment her feet touched the ground, Fonda acquiesced in the AAA visit because, as she writes, "Altering the plans [not scheduled for another two weeks!] appears to cause consternation. Decisions have been made. I am too tired to protest." Still, she decides, "I am going." Lots of Americans, she writes, are taken to military installations; lots of them have to wear helmets. And since such Americans were anti-Americans who believed their country was the "imperialist aggressor" in Vietnam, lots of them had beatific expressions on their face when they sat in gun turrets designed to kill their own countrymen.
Sarcasm seems a weak replacement for facts here.
As she arrives at an antiaircraft gun installation on the outskirts of Hanoi and sees a weapon used to shoot down American aircraft, Fonda purports to be surprised at "a horde of photographers and journalists." (Sure, a Hollywood star is surprised to see cameras at a showpiece event that has been set up for her!)
Mind reading.
The Communist soldiers sing. Fonda’s translator translates: "All men are created equal. They are given certain rights; among these are life, liberty and happiness." (We are not making this up.) Fonda is so moved by this musical version of our Declaration of Independence that "I begin to cry and clap. These young men should not be our enemy. They celebrate the same words Americans do." [Emphasis is Fonda’s]
One good performance deserves another. The AAA gunners ask Fonda to reciprocate with a song of her own. Somehow Fonda has managed to anticipate this request before leaving the United States. She has memorized in Vietnamese a song written by South Vietnamese and antiwar activists -- i.e., supporters of the Communist propaganda offensive. "Everyone laughs and claps, including me," she writes.
The performance is over. "Someone, I don’t remember who, leads me toward the gun, and I sit down, still applauding. It all has nothing to do with where I am sitting. I hardly even think about where I am sitting." Give us a break.
I admit this looks kind of iffy. But looking bad and
being bad aren't the same thing.
These three sentences are the only explanation in some 600 pages of Fonda’s autobiography of why she provided the North Vietnamese Communists with a propaganda picture worth, not the proverbial thousand words, but rather thousands of American and Vietnamese lives.
This is the the writer's own conclusions mixed in with some mind reading and hyperbole (concluding without quantifying how this photo ope resulted in the loss of thousands of American lives.
As Fonda walks away, we are asked to believe that the implications of her conduct suddenly dawned on her. She writes, "Oh my God. It’s going to look like I was trying to shoot down America planes." [Emphasis Fonda’s] Not really, Jane. It looks just like you thought that shooting down American planes was a fantastic idea, which is evident from everything else you did and said in Vietnam and in respect to the war before and after.
Mind reading.
She claims, preposterously,
Isn't this just Gonzo writing at this point?
in her autobiography that she pleaded with her translator to make sure her hosts saw to it that the potentially embarrassing photographs were not published. If this is true, how come she didn’t protest the pictures when they were published? How come it took her twenty years to "apologize" for embarrassing herself (which was the extent of her apology)?
I don't like accusations that disguise themselves as questions. It's lazy. Neither you or I know why it took her twenty years to apologize. It can be as innocent or insidious as you please.
This self-serving assertion
Gonzo writing.
is of course belied by the fact that she went to the gun emplacement installation in the first place and allowed herself to be photographed – for what purpose? Home entertainment?
Sarcasm, mind reading, accusations disguised as questions...it has no place in an article meant to be taken seriously.
Thirty-three years later comes this grudging (and embarrassing and not credible) admission: "It is possible that the Vietnamese had it all planned." [Emphasis ours] But, she continues, "can I really blame them?"
Ugh...not going to even try defending her here.
And besides, Fonda adds as an afterthought: "the gun was inactive, there were no planes overhead." In what reality is this woman living?
It sounds to me like she was saying that the gun at that moment wasn't being fired and at that moment that there were no planes overhead. I don't think she was claiming qualification to know whether or not the gun had been decommissioned.