Hanoi Jane Sharpens Her Knife

No sooner had we forgiven Jane Fonda for her sins of many years ago than she gives fresh reason to condemn her. Today on The View–my God, does someone actually watch that show?–she suggested that pro-lifers should be murdered:

One of the View’s hosts hurried to assure the audience that Fonda was kidding, but Jane herself remained mute. Subsequently, she beat a retreat:

“While women’s reproductive rights are a very serious issue and extremely important to me, my comment on The View was obviously made in jest,” Fonda told Fox News Digital in a statement. “My body language and tone made it clear to those in the room – and to anyone watching – that I was using hyperbole to make a point.”

We’ll keep that in mind next time a conservative says on television that some category of liberals should be killed. Should that ever happen.

Suggestions that conservatives should be murdered, whether “in jest” or not, have proliferated on the Left. There is no comparable phenomenon on the right. I have not seen any conservative joke about the need to assassinate Democratic Party politicians on television. Am I forgetting something? I don’t think so.

Unfortunately, liberals’ tolerance of this kind of talk has had real consequences. Most notable, of course, is James Hodgkinson’s devastating attack on the Republican Congressional baseball team. And when Nicholas Roske set out to murder Justice Brett Kavanaugh, it is likely that he had extremist pro-abortion rhetoric in mind. But I see no significant effort by sane Democrats (assuming their increasingly unicorn-like existence) to distance themselves from the excesses of “activists” like Jane Fonda.