Since there are currently claims about Jane Fonda that are not true, this bit of information might help clear some of them up: Blame Jane Falsehoods November 22, 2010 at 4:12 pm Q: Is President Obama honoring Jane Fonda as one of the women of the century? A: No. That was done 11 years ago by Barbara Walters of ABC News. FULL QUESTION A recent chain e-mail claims that Obama will honor Jane Fonda. Is this true? Never Forgive A Traitor For those of you too young to remember Hanoi Jane is a bad person and did some terrible things during the Vietnam war. Things that can not be forgiven!!!! For those who served and/or died. . . NEVER FORGIVE A TRAITOR. SHE REALLY WAS A TRAITOR!! And now OBAMA wants to honor her……!!!! FULL ANSWER It is simply FALSE that the president is planning to honor Jane Fonda as one of the "100 women of the century," as this chain e-mail claims. Fonda was one of many women featured in a Barbara Walters special for ABC News called "A Celebration: 100 Years of Great Women," which looked at the "most inspiring, intriguing and entertaining" women of the 20th century. It was actually based on a list of the "100 Most Important Women of the 20th Century" selected by a panel for Ladies’ Home Journal. The program hosted by Walters aired on April 30, 1999, nearly 10 years prior to Obama becoming president. Versions of this e-mail — without references to Obama, of course — began circulating soon after Walters’ special aired. They make some false claims about Fonda. Jane Fonda in Vietnam It is true that Fonda, an actress and activist, traveled to Hanoi, North Vietnam, in 1972 to protest U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. She delivered several messages on the communist country’s Radio Hanoi encouraging American soldiers not to bomb the North Vietnamese. She also reportedly called freed American prisoners of war returning to the U.S. "hypocrites and liars" for claiming they had been tortured by their captors. And she was infamously photographed posing warmly with a group of North Vietnamese soldiers at an anti-aircraft gun site during her visit there. Her actions earned her the moniker "Hanoi Jane" from war veterans of that era who still harbor bad feelings toward her to this day. But whatever one may think of Fonda’s visit to Hanoi, she did not do some of the things claimed in this e-mail message. In fact, some of the claims were debunked years ago by some of the very people named in the e-mail. False Claims It is not true, as this e-mail claims, that Jerry Driscoll, a former POW in Vietnam, suffered career-ending double vision from a beating he allegedly received from his captors after Fonda visited. Driscoll, who has said he never met Fonda, has denied for years that the scenario described in the e-mail ever happened. In 2005, the Star Tribune of Minneapolis reported him saying: Star Tribune, May 25, 2005: "Totally false. It did not happen," Driscoll said. Held almost seven years, Driscoll has negative feelings about Fonda because of her visit, but he wasn’t beaten because of her and can see just fine. After all, he flies corporate jets now, after retiring as a pilot from the Air Force and later American Airlines. "I don’t know who came up with [my] name. The trouble that individual has caused me!" he said, referring to the time he has spent repeatedly denying the persistent myth. It also is not true that Fonda gave North Vietnamese guards little pieces of paper with the Social Security numbers of American POWs on them that supposedly resulted in the beatings of former POW Larry Carrigan and three others. Since e-mails like this one began circulating in 1999, Mike McGrath, a former POW and director and historian of the Nam-POWs, has been denying that there were any beating deaths as a result of Fonda’s visit: Star Tribune, May 25, 2005: Carrigan, 64, is so tired of having to repeat that he wasn’t beaten after Fonda’s visit and that there were no beating deaths at that time that he won’t talk to the media anymore, said Mike McGrath, a retired Navy pilot held for almost six years and historian of the nonprofit NAM-POWs veterans group. McGrath, 65, of Colorado, also said there were no known beating deaths of POWs after 1969. All known POWs in North Vietnam were released early in 1973. "We don’t want to be party to false stories, which could be used as an excuse that her real actions didn’t really happen, either," McGrath wrote in a 1999 rebuttal to the e-mails, when he was president of NAM-POWs.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Jul 2013 16:43:01 +0000
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