Jane Fonda has released yet another half-hearted apology for her antics during the Vietnam War, this time to Variety.
In an interview with the entertainment magazine earlier this week, she addressed the infamous 1972 photograph of her sitting on an anti-aircraft gun that was used to shoot down U.S. Air Force planes during the Vietnam War.
“I’m proud that I went to Vietnam when I did, but what I say in the film is true: I am just so sorry that I was thoughtless enough to sit down on that gun at that time,” Fonda said. “The message that sends to the guys that were there and their families, it’s horrible for me to think about that.”
“Sometimes I think, ‘Oh I wish I could do it over’ because there are things I would say differently now.”
Obviously, she did not actually apologize, seemingly more interested in alleviating her guilt by pontificating.
Veterans and their supporters were not quick to forgive Fonda for her inappropriate actions and shared their thoughts on Twitter.
Though she has a prolific television and film career, the 80-year-old actress is also known as “Hanoi Jane” after posing for several photos with the North Vietnamese Army. She had traveled to enemy territory, even broadcasting from radio stations in the area, denouncing America and the war effort and going so far as to deny that prisoners of war were being mistreated despite corroborated reports.
She has since tried to deflect responsibility for the incident claiming that she was “manipulated” into posing for the photo in her 2005 memoir. In 2011 she addressed it again on her website, calling her actions “a two-minute lapse of sanity that will haunt me forever.”
Of course, she sees herself as the victim despite traveling into enemy territory, posing with their weaponry, and not using her fame to negotiate the release of American prisoners of war, all of her own volition.