Last week Gary Kasparov got a chessboard slammed over his head. This week Jane Fonda got a brownish goo of tobacco juice orally discharged upon her face. "I consider it a debt of honor," explained veteran Michael Smith. "She spit in our faces for 37 years. It was absolutely worth it. There are a lot of veterans who would love to do what I did." Smith, who was arrested, notes that he doesn't even chew tobacco, indulging, apparently, for special occassions such as Jane Fonda book-signings.

Jane Fonda is a pretty detestable character. She gave pep-talks to the enemy on their airwaves and staged a propagandistic photo-op sitting on an anti-aircraft gun used to kill American pilots. But even Jane Fonda doesn't deserve the contents of some dude's mouth sprayed across her face.

I only have one thing to say, and have said it on my blog before, these are people that have nothing to debate, so they assault. Whether it is pies in the face, of conservatives, or a spit in the face of the likes of Jane fonda. this is a sad place for American people to be playing in.

Why people? Do you have nothing of value to say anymore?

Not only do these flingers of goo have nothing to say, they reject the notion that their opponent's side of the discussion, issue, or argument has even a shred of validity. They are rejecting the very concept of consideration and compromise. They have the mindset that in a different setting would welcome real atrocities to people with whom they disagree.

Yes, she does. That was about all the debate she's worthy of.

First of all, Buchanan, Coulter, and Horowitz have arguments. They received goo in exchange for arguments. Fonda receives goo in exchange for the usual leftist hissy fits. So there is a slight difference in targets. There is no difference in the deplorability of those responses, however.

The incident does give me pause about something that I've previously written here: that this is somehow more consistent with the left than the right.

I now think I did so with too quick of an ana-lysis. It is true that if I think of throwing a political fit, myself, I do so in the spirit of the 60s (towards which I've always had a love-hate type of relationship). But that this occurs to me does not mean that there hasn't always been reactions that come straight out of self-possession on both sides.

In pretending that incivility is a recent development I ignored a bit of ugly history. Take for example, Eisenhower's forced school integration where the proponents of the status quo screamed nasty things at children who were just trying to go to school. Even as a conservative, I have to admit that they defended a type of conservative stance, themselves.

Now the spitter may turn out to be far from conservative. It may be that he has a particular beef against Fonda, having been a veteran of the the war. But this would be a convenient fact for me to hide behind if it were so. And whether or not I admit that the glorification of 60s radicalism lends a certain cozyness to fits of this type, I have to revise my over-projection, anyway.

Instead of tobacco I would have used a high powered rifle from a rooftop. Commie-b!tch

Sea King,

You indicate that the expectorator may have had views that lean to the right thus he’s no different from the pie throwers and hurlers.

You’ve done a good job of covering the bases here but the fact that this guy took action against a way left celebrity probably has very little to with his political or social sentiments. More likely, it was simply a reaction against a person he intensely dislikes.

I think he was just a pi$$ed off Vet who was expressing his disgust.

My guess is that the Spitting Veteran is a working Joe for whom Fonda's jet-set/do-gooder lifestyle (Do you know she helped stage The Vagina Monologues in India?) is as offensive as it is incomprehensible.

Is his hatred of her understandable? In part. Is what he did a crime? Yes. Should we be concerned that it could pave the way for more violent targeting of celebrities? Of course.

On the consequences of celebrities lending star-power to radical causes, I would like to see Jane Fonda forced to comment, for example, on fellow-actress Jean Seberg's utterly tragic involvement with the 60s Franco-Hollywood Left; or on Andre Gide's repudiation of the Soviet Union (in "The God That Failed"); or, despite African-American actor Paul Robeson's outspoken defense of the USSR, on the fact that ordinary African-Americans who defected to that country were among those deported to the labor camps (Anne Appelbaum's "Gulag"). And that's not even discussing Vietnam. I couldn't help but wonder about these points thumbing through her biography yesterday at my local B&N.

ASDF: "I think he was just a pi$$ed off Vet who was expressing his disgust."

And I covered that as well. But having considered that possibility, that would be just a happenstance, and this event made me consider where I had erred were this a case of a conservative spitting on a liberal.

After all pies and salad dressing aren't quite as bad as tabacco that was chewed precisely to spit at someone. My satisfaction that this was a "liberal problem", disturbed me while reconsidering this event.

So I find an edge here and a counter there, but after all, it is all ridiculous behavior.

I understand completely. But the key here is 'WERE this a case of.....'.

We don't know if it was. And we shouldn't try to be too fair with the lib tools who do these types of things regularly.

Sounds like you're thinking too much about this and have developed a guilty conscience.

"And we shouldn't try to be too fair with the lib tools who do these types of things regularly."

:D I wasn't really being fair with them, I was trying to be more fair to liberals, in general. As I said, apoplexy didn't begin with the 60s liberals, and has not always been liberals.

She played games and laffs while American GIs were dieing in combat. I would not be against a large T branded on her fore head.
As for argument, i.e., the stating and examination of opposing views for the purpose of arriveing at the truth, she has no arguments. And, she has no interest in the truth. (The 'T' on her fore head is not for truth. The only sad part of the incident is that it brought her much need publicity.

A far more effective protest would have been for him to ask her to dedicate the copy she was signing to some fallen comrade, and in it, for her to write her apologies.

That would have been more stinging and spoken greater volumes, I think.

Better than that if he would have asked her to dedicate the book to an actual convicted baby killer over in 'Nam.

Her life so far?……born into a rich Hollywood family resulting in multiple acting gigs providing notoriety and causing her to falsely think she had an intelligent opinion about anything causing her go to NVN and make an azz out of herself, before/during/after being involved with a string of questionable men causing her to get into the self improvement business and making a lot of money at it. Now she writes books and takes Beechnut baths.