The Jane Fonda Syndrome

In experiments with conditioned reflex, Ivan Pavlov taught a hungry dog to salivate at the sound of a bell. That was about 100 years ago. In contemporary usage, the same conditioning apparently prevails among veterans of the Vietnam War. They salivate at the mention of Jane Fonda.

It doesn’t even have to be Fonda herself. Last week, I included the name of her ex-husband, Tom Hayden, in a column and there was instant salivation by association.

Oddly, the vitriol that followed was directed at Fonda, not at Hayden, although both went to Hanoi during the Vietnam War and both are considered traitors by those veterans who, emotionally at least, have never shed their uniforms.

One e-mailer was especially outraged because, he said, Fonda was being honored as woman of the century. The only reference I could find was that in April 1999, Barbara Walters included her in an ABC special that featured “100 years of great women.”

Those veterans and their followers whose salivating had lessened found reason to drool anew, causing the American Legion to issue a statement saying that including Fonda in the century list “is a disservice to all the others who have done so much for America.”

Glory hallelujah, how the venom flowed thereafter. “Traitor” became one of the milder epithets hurled at her, among many I can’t even mention. She’s the antichrist, no doubt about it, and maybe worse.

*

I began wondering why, after all these years, there was still so much hatred of Jane Fonda. We’ve forgiven the Germans, the Japanese, the Russians, the North Vietnamese, the Chinese and maybe the North Koreans.

Hell, we’ve even softened toward England, Spain, Mexico and the Confederate Army.

Then why can’t we forgive a woman who, in a climate of protest, went to Hanoi seeking peace, the way Henry Kissinger sought peace later to great applause?

The answers I’ve received asking that question range from the arrogance of her presence in a man’s domain to the idea that she’s a symbol to all those in uniform who were targeted as criminals by antiwar activists during the turbulent 1960s.

Often mentioned is a radio address Fonda made in Hanoi in 1972 in which she praised the Vietnamese and damned Nixon, and a photograph of her at a Communist gun emplacement, wearing an enemy helmet and smiling prettily.

“She became a symbol with that photograph,” Al Lance said in a telephone interview. He’s national commander of the American Legion. “Anyone who was ever spit upon or called baby-killer associates that with Jane Fonda, no matter who actually did the spitting.”

Much said about Fonda by Vietnam era veterans is untrue, Lance said in a surprisingly moderate tone. He paused and then added: “If I sound conciliatory, it’s because she recanted.”

*

His reference was to Fonda’s 1988 televised apology “to men who were in Vietnam, who I hurt, or whose pain I caused to deepen because of things that I said or did.”

Did we forgive and forget? Not everyone:

“Jane Fonda was a traitor, naive or not. She should have been shot and will never be forgiven.”

“They [Fonda and Hayden] danced while we died and that will never be forgotten or forgiven.”

Marita Sturken suggests that, unlike veterans of World War II, Vietnam War veterans are locked in a time warp. “They still hold 24-hour vigils at the Vietnam War memorial,” she says. “They still wear their camouflage uniforms and they keep the MIA issue alive when there’s no reason to. Some veterans have never managed to move past all that.”

Sturken is an associate professor at USC’s Annenberg School of Communications and author of “Tangled Memories,” a book partly about the war in Vietnam.

Jane Fonda is “easy to hate,” Sturken says, because she’s a celebrity, she’s privileged and “she’s not pathetic.” It was Sturken who speculated that another reason for the vitriol is that she’s a woman who violated a man’s world.

Fonda has reinvented herself many times, from actress to activist to fitness queen to dutiful housewife and, most recently, to born-again Christian. Contrary to Sturken’s comment, she is in many ways pathetic. But she’s never been important enough or evil enough to be a national enemy.

While no one who has ever been in combat should forget either war’s pain or war’s victims, there comes a time to hang up the uniform and get on about our business. I had to, and you should too. Stop salivating, boys. The war’s over. Move on.

* Al Martinez’s column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com.