The American Spectator : From Hanoi Jane to Imam Obama

The American Spectator : From Hanoi Jane to Imam Obama:

From Hanoi Jane to Imam Obama

By Jeffrey Lord on 8.24.10 @ 6:09AM

It was the picture worth a thousand words.

The emblematic political ancestor of the connection between the Ground Zero Mosque and the economy that is now wreaking havoc in the 2010 campaign.

In the middle of the 1972 presidential campaign that featured President Richard Nixon versus the Democrats' Senator George McGovern, all of a sudden Americans were talking about something else.

A photograph.

Actress Jane Fonda, already well on her way to transforming her image from glamorous movie star to left-wing radical activist, was visiting Hanoi that July, only days after the very liberal, anti-war McGovern claimed the Democratic presidential nomination. That would be Hanoi, North Vietnam. The enemy capital. In wartime. When hundreds of thousands of American kids were fighting for their lives in the larger cause of freedom.

Befitting an actress, she had her picture taken. Sitting at a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft battery. Smiling, wearing a military helmet, Fonda happily posed as her Communist hosts grinned and laughed along with her at the image of the famous American leftist film star clapping with joy as if she were poised to shoot down their enemy -- American pilots. Later, Fonda took to Radio Hanoi to broadcast her views to the world. She accused the President of the United States of being a "war criminal" and insisted that returning American POW's who said the North Vietnamese had tortured them were "hypocrites and liars."