Hanoi Jane Blogs

Doesn't my hair look GREAT?!?

Like. Hi! I’m all excited today! I just started this blog! At 71! Which is so funny, since I'm such a luddite (wow! I didn't even know I knew such big words)...I'm a big fat technophobe. Like. I didn't even start shaving my armpits until my friend showed me how to do that last summer.

Like. I also didn’t even google anything until my friend taught me how this past summer…because…well…I'm dumber than Nancy Pelosi!

The FIRST thing I googled was my name! I found some awesome pictures.

These bring back great memories (for me):



They're from my August 22, 1972, broadcast from the Hotel Especen, in Hanoi, Vietnam.

I have such fond memories of that time (even more fond than snookering Ted into marrying me for 10 years and then taking him for $40 million...and then losing most of it by investing in Enron).

The next thing I googled was my actual speech. I remember every word like it was yesterday (you can forget that apology I made in 1988…it was as about as sincere as my love for Ted).

This is Jane Fonda. During my two-week visit in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, I've had the opportunity to visit a great many places and speak to a large number of people from all walks of life-workers, peasants, students, artists and dancers, historians, journalists, film actresses, soldiers, militia girls, members of the women's union, writers.

I visited the (Dam Xuac) agricultural coop, where the silk worms are also raised and thread is made. I visited a textile factory, a kindergarten in Hanoi. The beautiful Temple of Literature was where I saw traditional dances and heard songs of resistance. I also saw unforgettable ballet about the guerrillas training bees in the south to attack enemy soldiers. The bees were danced by women, and they did their job well.

In the shadow of the Temple of Literature I saw Vietnamese actors and actresses perform the second act of Arthur Miller's play All My Sons, and this was very moving to me-the fact that artists here are translating and performing American plays while US imperialists are bombing their country.

I cherish the memory of the blushing militia girls on the roof of their factory, encouraging one of their sisters as she sang a song praising the blue sky of Vietnam-these women, who are so gentle and poetic, whose voices are so beautiful, but who, when American planes are bombing their city, become such good fighters.
I cherish the way a farmer evacuated from Hanoi, without hesitation, offered me, an American, their best individual bomb shelter while US bombs fell near by. The daughter and I, in fact, shared the shelter wrapped in each others arms, cheek against cheek. It was on the road back from Nam Dinh, where I had witnessed the systematic destruction of civilian targets-schools, hospitals, pagodas, the factories, houses, and the dike system.

As I left the United States two weeks ago, Nixon was again telling the American people that he was winding down the war, but in the rubble-strewn streets of Nam Dinh, his words echoed with sinister (words indistinct) of a true killer. And like the young Vietnamese woman I held in my arms clinging to me tightly-and I pressed my cheek against hers-I thought, this is a war against Vietnam perhaps, but the tragedy is America's.

One thing that I have learned beyond a shadow of a doubt since I've been in this country is that Nixon will never be able to break the spirit of these people; he'll never be able to turn Vietnam, north and south, into a neo-colony of the United States by bombing, by invading, by attacking in any way. One has only to go into the countryside and listen to the peasants describe the lives they led before the revolution to understand why every bomb that is dropped only strengthens their determination to resist.

I've spoken to many peasants who talked about the days when their parents had to sell themselves to landlords as virtually slaves, when there were very few schools and much illiteracy, inadequate medical care, when they were not masters of their own lives.

But now, despite the bombs, despite the crimes being created-being committed against them by Richard Nixon, these people own their own land, build their own schools-the children learning, literacy- illiteracy is being wiped out, there is no more prostitution as there was during the time when this was a French colony. In other words, the people have taken power into their own hands, and they are controlling their own lives.

And after 4,000 years of struggling against nature and foreign invaders-and the last 25 years, prior to the revolution, of struggling against French colonialism-I don't think that the people of Vietnam are about to compromise in any way, shape or form about the freedom and independence of their country, and I think Richard Nixon would do well to read Vietnamese history, particularly their poetry, and particularly the poetry written by Ho Chi Minh.

Then…I was so giddy with finding all of my old “lapses of judgement,” I decided to find one of my more recent ones…you know…when I said “cunt” on the Today Show!

That’s one of my favorites! It changed my life. It really did!

Ooh! This blogging stuff is really cool.

I can’t wait to make my next post and tell you about flying to New York with my dog Tulea and having her shit on my lap when a goose went through one of the plane engines and we dropped 10,000 feet. I was so pissed, I marched right up to the cabin and banged on that steel door until the head flight attendant tased my ass and I got hauled away to jail…again…when we landed.

Until next time, Toodles!