TMZ reports (with video) that Jane Fonda has expressed her preference for Barack Obama for president. At the Los Angeles Times Top of the Ticket blog, Andrew Malcolm puts Fonda's expression of support, shall we say, in context:

The problem for those of a certain generation that endured the Vietnam War and the sometimes violent domestic conflict that accompanied it at home is that during Fonda's controversial wartime visit to North Vietnam, she was photographed at a Communist anti-aircraft gun battery.

According to the photo caption distributed at the time, she joined North Vietnamese soldiers there in singing an antiwar song while preparing to shoot at attacking Americans.

This earned her the nickname Hanoi Jane (indeed, that's the TMZ headline this afternoon) and an enduring image as a polarizing figure, especially regarding patriotism.

As it happens, the Republican presidential candidate this time is Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who was one of those American fliers shot down over that same city by those same anti-aircraft forces, tortured and spent nearly six years in a POW cell while Fonda returned home.

Close observers of the campaign may recall that Senator McCain admits to having been tied up at the time of the 1969 Woodstock festival. He was still tied up at the time of Fonda's 1972 visit to Hanoi.

UPDATE: At the Forum, NamDoc67 says:

Fonda is herself fond of citing this photo as the momentary lapse in judgment that selectively, and all by itself, mistakenly tarred her as something less than patriotic.

The fact is, this one photo is just the tip of the huge iceberg of her treasonous activities over years. Making psy-ops broadcasts over a two week period from Hanoi to our troops in South Vietnam, urging them to desert and/or surrender. Her sponsorship of VVAW and its Winter Soldier Investigation – one of the enemy’s major propaganda efforts of the war, designed to delegitimize our military and all those who served in it; and it worked too! Smearing our returned POWs as “liars” because they told the truth about their torture at the hands of the North Vietnamese. The list goes on and on.

Why she was never prosecuted for treason is beyond comprehension. This failure is one of the most glaring examples of when the U.S. government began to abandon its duty to enforce the rule of law against enemies more dangerous to its long term survival than any armed foreign force.

The only way we will ever get to see the real Obama, since he himself will never show us, is by the mirror his endorsers and surrogates and spiritual and intellectual mentors provide. Take careful note, and beware.

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