Suffers delusions of grandeur
Peter Fonda is training his grandkids to use rifles. Why? Obamageddon is upon us, obvs.
I’m training my grandchildren to use long-range rifles,” said the actor, 71. “For what purpose? Well, I’m not going to say the words ‘Barack Obama’, but …”
He added, enigmatically: “It’s more of a thought process than an actuality, but we are heading for a major conflict between the haves and the have nots. I came here many years ago with a biker movie and we stopped a war. Now, it’s about starting the world.
“I prefer to not to use the words, ‘let’s stop something’. I prefer to say, ‘let’s start something, let’s start the world’.
Really, Peter Fonda? Easy Rider ended the Vietnam War?
Are you stupid or somethin’, son?
[via Alan Colmes Liberaland]
4tehlulz
BOTH SIDES DO IT
BGinCHI
When is Big Pharma gonna invent a pill that stops you from getting fucking stupid when you get old?
They can make your dick hard but they can’t make your brain work better?
Wait, maybe there’s a connection….
DBrown
I see we have a new way of spelling asshole …
Tom Levenson
This is where I really, really miss Dennis Hopper. He would have straightened out this punk without dropping a beat.
gypsy howell
still dropping acid, are we, Captain America?
beltane
I thought he was no longer with us so it is nice to hear he is still alive. Here we have further proof that the GOP’s base is limited to rich, old paranoid white men. I am starting to suspect teabaggerism is just another side affect to all the meds this demographic consumes, right alongside the rashes, shortness of breath and anal leakage.
handy
@Tom Levenson:
Didn’t Hopper go Full Metal Wingnut in the end?
Gravenstone
@Tom Levenson: I thought Hopper turned to the Wingnut side in his later years as well?
gnomedad
I think I have a new entry for my wife’s “Just shoot me if I ever …” list.
NobodySpecial
In the 90’s we used to joke about parents taking too many drugs in the 70’s.
Little did we know Grandpa Zonker would get all his drugged up buddies at the nursing home and vote in their kids to make everything so fucked up it would look normal to their rheumatic eyes.
Omnes Omnibus
I am hoping that there is a context out of which this was taken.
General Stuck
Peter has always had a screw or two loose, I suspect from unresolved father issues and a little too much acid. I like Jane way more. I once ran into him at the Bozeman MT airport about a thousand years ago, standing by the luggage after I’d gotten off the plane. We just looked at each other, and I managed a “how’s it goin man”. He just gave a shit eating grin and said nothing. Then a little girl came bounding off the plane and ran over to him screaming “daddy”. Always figured that was Bridget.
Linda Featheringill
Fame and fortune cannot protect you from dementia.
Han's Solo
Wow, if I were one of his kids I’d keep my children away from grandpa. What the hell else is he teaching them, how to make a bong out of a motorcycle tail pipe?
About the only positive about people who think this way is that they to be so old they don’t have much time left.
And look at him bragging about a film he made before many of us were born. Not many accomplishments to brag about since then? Did your life peak in the sixties? Are you mad about becoming a has been? Let me guess, it’s Obama’s fault you are irrelevant, when he went back in time to plant the birth certificate he took the time to deep six your career?
Bitter Old Man Syndrome big time!
Hunter Gathers
I don’t know about y’all, but the first place I’m going to loot when The Great Class War of 2016 starts is Peter Fonda’s house. You know, to steal all of the money he doesn’t make by not acting in any movies recently. Or perhaps Bridget supplies him with a monthly stipend.
PeakVT
Another day, another dipshit that is unable to comprehend what the US government has in its arsenal.
priscianus jr
Of course Easy Rider didn’t end the Vietnam War, but it was (and remains) a quintessential statement of the antiwar youth of that time. It had a very powerful impact. But now he’s just spouting nonsense.
bobbo
Dad would be spinning in his grave.
El Tiburon
I get the sense he was talking about the entire anti-war movement. Not a singular film.
Although, after reading Norman Soloman’s “Made Love Got War” it is questionable that the 60s anti-war movement has had any effect.
I do recommend – it is a very good read.
hhex65
I thought David Crosby stopped the war by almost cutting his hair but then not cutting his hair.
Captain Goto
A damned shame. I liked him a hell of a lot in “Ulee’s Gold.”
AliceBlue
@handy: @Gravenstone:
Hopper did go wingnut toward the end of his life, but I read somewhere that he voted for Obama.
jrg
Once again, I’m left wondering… Where the fuck were these morons when Dubya was arresting protesters, opening secret prisons, and holding Americans without due process?
I think I’ll just echo the sentiments already expressed, and assume he was high as a bat from about ’03-’08.
Mouse Tolliver
@handy:
Hopper turned conservative, but the current crop of Republicans was so crazy he became an Obama supporter. You know your party’s rolling in batshit when it’s too crazy for Frank Booth.
Arrik
Did anyone actually read what he was talking about (Deepwater Horizon and BP)? He’s hardly a Teapartying Republican, he just thinks Obama mishandled the oil spill. That and the pending class war…
srv
As always, y’all miss the point. He’s a wingnut that wants to shoot the wingnuts in a class war? The ending of Easy Rider lost on you?
As an agent for the reds back then, Peter realizes that real change must come through the barrel of a gun. Hope doesn’t bring change, violence brings change. You flower children can keep throwing daisies at the wingnuts, ride your Harleys through wingnutland and get capped, or …
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@bobbo: and Jane’s gonna think seriously about cutting his allowance.
I think Hopper eventually turned on Bush over Iraq, but never came all the way back to the left. Rip Torn turned Republican, too, but I don’t think they’ll ask him to the next convention.
Fred
wtf does any of that mean anyways? Is Grampy getting Alzheimers. Read it a few times and it still doesn’t make sense. Is he trying to make an antiwar statement by suggesting kids be taught about armed revolt and assassination?
Wtf? Add another fuckhead to the list of has been actors I will boycott.
FlipYrWhig
@priscianus jr: I’m turning 40 this year and saw _Easy Rider_ a few years ago. Couldn’t figure out why it was supposed to be interesting. For that matter, I had the same reaction to _Midnight Cowboy_. Why was it a big deal? Because it sort of embraced aimlessness?
LowProfileinGA
Never, ever, use the word rifle in the same paragraph with POTUS.
ABL
@Tom Levenson: Hopper went nuts in his old age too.
“Pop quiz, hotshot.”
ABL
@handy: beat me to it.
Redshift
@srv: I think many of us also remember the lesson that the guy trying to push people to get violent is the FBI plant.
ABL
@Mouse Tolliver: aha. learn something new every day.
Linda Featheringill
@El Tiburon:
I was part of the antiwar movement. And it is highly questionable whether me made any difference whatsoever.
We were morally right, of course but did we stop a war? No.
We gave the FBI something to do, though. :-)
Ruckus
Maybe the 50’s anti-drug films were correct after all. Brain damage IS a
possibilityreality with drug use.jeff
@FlipYrWhig:
I”m about the same age as you. I have seen both films and thought they were pretty bad, but what I was left with mostly was just heavy disgust with the easy nihilism that some people back then considered freedom. Voigt, Fonda, and Hopper have all been republicans, I believe.
FlipYrWhig
Are we sure he said “start the _world_” and not “start the _war_”?
mantis
I’ll just note that Easy Rider came out in 1969, the same year the war ended! Wait…I may have some facts wrong there. Oh well. Start the world!
pragmatism
@Arrik: the class war part brings him right into mainstream wingnut. teatards are a subset of that group. the subset that doesn’t realize they are fighting against their own interests.
FlipYrWhig
@jeff: I guess that was the nature of “cool” for a few years.
pragmatism
hey ABL, you ever get a liquor sponsor for your spelling bee? i can help.
BGinCHI
@Captain Goto: Second that. Great film.
srv
@Redshift: Sacrifices must be made. Those agents are really agents-of-change.
Peter is willing put his grandkids in the line of fire – quite Biblical if you ask me.
MonkeyBoy
Firearm practice is an important responsibility for most survivalists. So when they are plinking away at silhouettes who do they imagine they are shooting? Marauding Negros and Mexicans who are after their stockpile of food, ammo, and women, because everybody knows that Negros and Mexicans are too lazy to prepare for the coming collapse of civilization, in fact they are causing it so they can get some white women.
Tom Hilton
Of course not!
The Wild Angels ended the Vietnam War. Everybody knows that!
Steve
Ladies & Gentlemen, may I present to you the opening act of your brain on drugs world tour, Peter Fonda…
Sad_Dem
Man, those older Baby Boomers who took all those drugs sure do have a wildly overinflated sense of their own importance, don’t they? Along with a fantastic gifts in the area of not understanding how they became the problem.
Tom Hilton
In all seriousness, though, not only did Easy Rider not end the Vietnam War; it isn’t even the best movie Peter Fonda appeared in. That would be The Limey.
handy
@Tom Hilton:
Now that was a flick! Agreed on both counts.
stuckinred
@Tom Hilton: Sheeet The Wild Angels was badass and the Trip was killer!
Tom Hilton
Shorter Peter Fonda:
FlipYrWhig
@Sad_Dem:
To be fair, the ones who _didn’t_ take as many drugs _still_ have an overinflated sense of their own importance.
Fred
@jeff: Voight is a hard core birther nutjob. So yea, Rethug.
Tom Levenson
@Gravenstone: I believe he did — but I’m remembering the stone crazy of his earlier movie portrayals, and the truly scary chill I personally experienced the one time I met him.
Hopper — the idea, not the man.
stuckinred
Blue’s Theme
Tom Levenson
@ABL: Yeah I know. But I try to remember my heroes (and villains) in the fullness of their youth, and not in the decline of age.
tkogrumpy
@FlipYrWhig: I think you really had to come of age in the 1950’s, as I did to understand it’s contemporary effect. the fifties was a straightjacket.
stuckinred
@FlipYrWhig: fuk u
Tom Levenson
Besides. Anyone but me find it really depressing in a “that’s unpossible” kind of way to think of Fonda as a grand dad?
Shit. If he’s that old, I’m getting creaky myself. Unforgivable.
Citizen_X
@srv:
Soon as I see you lead the way, comrade. I’ll be right behind you.
(Note to others: I don’t expect to be moving out my chair anytime soon.)
Tom Levenson
@stuckinred: Roger that.
FlipYrWhig
@stuckinred: @Tom Levenson: Hey, I came of age in the ’80s. It’s not like I don’t know how badly _my_ generation sucks.
ppcli
“I came here many years ago with a biker movie and we stopped a war.”
Perhaps he means that by contributing to the election of Nixon, Easy Rider stopped the War on Poverty.
Cat Lady
What is it about this president that has made so many people lose their shit? I wonder/
Some Guy
Just wow. Wow. Seriously, wow. Had no clue P to the F was such a whackadoodle.
Stopped a War? 4 years later, sure, but it all comes back to Easy Rider. Tet, bombing Cambodia, Vietnamization, those are hack arguments.
Oh, and training kids to assassinate a president. Almost forgot THAT one. Can he be detained on return to the U.S.? I mean its probably a waste of Federal money but wouldn’t you LOVE to be the Secret Service person who gets to ask PFfffff, what the fuck he meant? That would be a good day, in my book.
trollhattan
Looks like Fonda’s been playing golf with Mamet. And you know what the radio’s tuned to on their drive to the links.
Another born-roundin’-third-on-the-way-to-home-plate success, protectin’ his sack o’ loot from commie libruls. These asshats have become tiresome.
shortstop
@Tom Levenson: Er, lighten up, y’all, lest you prove Flip’s point.
tkogrumpy
@FlipYrWhig: He’s my age, not a boomer Fonda and I were four years old when my father was killing Nipponese in the philippines 1944.
Mary Jane
@Sad_Dem: At 71, he’s technically not a Boomer, but of the Silent Generation. Boomers get a bad enough rap, please don’t add assholes of the SG to our demo, thank you.
Bill
@ Sad_Dem
“Man, those older Baby Boomers who took all those drugs sure do have a wildly overinflated sense of their own importance, don’t they?”
Older ones – not quite older ones. Took drugs – didn’t take drugs. Doesn’t really matter. The whole generation has an overinflated sense of importance.
I can’t wait for them to finally get out of the damn way.
Mike in NC
@Tom Hilton:
I thought it was Chuck Norris.
TuiMel
(S)He said, “I know what it’s like to be dead. I know what it means to be sad.”
And he’s making me wish that I’d never been born.
Lolis
Well at least he admits it is all about money.
Mnemosyne
Fonda makes perfect sense: he’s training his grandchildren in firearms so that when the sans culottes show up, they can fight them off.
You’d think a more sensible strategy would be to, you know, prevent the sans culottes from forming by making sure poor people aren’t completely fucking miserable, but I guess his taxes would go up by 1% and that’s unacceptable.
Though I have to admit, it does crack me up to see 60s refugees get all up in arms about “SOCKALISM!”
jeff
sometimes age brings openness: my own father is becoming more tolerant of others and actually becoming the social libertarian he always claimed to be. But he was an anti-hippie 40 years ago (though not
Mike E
@TuiMel: She said, “You don’t understand what I said.” I said, no no no, you’re wrong…
At least John (Lennon) saw him as the total drag he is!
Triassic Sands
Forgive, Petey, what he meant to say was:
MCA
I’m not even sure what he’s saying, but it’s scarily incoherent, that’s for damn sure. He thinks the President is coming to take his considerable riches or somesuch? Wow. Talk about a disconnect. Whatever the hell he was trying to say, I think old Tom Joad would not be proud of his son today.
I wouldn’t dump on Easy Rider as much as some of y’all, even though I don’t think it’s the masterpiece it’s held up to be. For one thing, it introduced the world to Jack Nicholson, who continues well into his ’70’s to be a vibrant and important actor. Jack may be loopy from time to time but I think it safe to say he’ll never come off as a dumb, paranoid, IGMFY Republican gun-toter like Fonda just did. It also was a very daring film at the time – it mostly dispensed with a plot so as to focus on mood and psychology; its protagonists admitted to failing at what they really wanted to do by the end; it not only dismissed the mainstream and establishment, but dissed the counterculture and showed how narcissistic and selfishly motivated many in the hippie antiestablishment world really were (way before most of the non-square young Boomers had figured that out); and it indicated that rejecting everything and/or living an idealized, unspoiled life based on some rigid adherence to principle is ultimately impossible and sort of hollow, anyway. It’s really bleak and depressing, frankly, in a way that didn’t glamorize the ’60’s the way some lesser works did. I trust the critics who were alive at the time and consider it an iconic film.
Judas Escargot
@Cat Lady:
He’s a very tall man.
Bill Arnold
ABL, PF is talking (long range) assassination, not “armed conflict”.
Judas Escargot
@FlipYrWhig:
Someone up above mentioned the “aimless nihilism as the illusion of freedom” of a Boomer epic like Easy Rider, and this Gen-X epic came to mind immediately.
No special love of the Boomers here. But they have no special monopoly on aimless nihilism, either.
RL
You’ve heard of the Jane Fonda workout, ever hear about the Peter Fonda workout?
No, how does that go?
Wake up, smoke a joint and call your sister to borrow some money.
Tom Hilton
@MCA: Actually, Roger Corman introduced the world to Jack Nicholson nearly a decade before Easy Rider (I was thinking Little Shop of Horrors, but it turns out he was in The Cry Baby Killer in 1958). Now, maybe Easy Rider introduced the part of the world that doesn’t watch cheapo Roger Corman movies to Jack Nicholson, but I want nothing to do with that part of the world.
Sad_Dem
My apologies. Peter Fonda is not a boomer.
Hal
Ok, admittedly completely off topic, but the role in Terms of Endearment was originally offered to Burt Reynolds, who turned it down to do…Stroker Ace. Just imaging the career Reynolds would have had in the eighties and nineties if he had just taken the role.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@BGinCHI:
There is. Giving old men boner pills sucks all of the blood out of their brains for an extended time, causing oxygen deprivation and brain damage.
@Sad_Dem:
Nope, he’s just a full metal racist asshole has-been actor.
opie jeanne
@jeff: I’m 61, not sure how old you are, and when I finally saw Easy Rider a couple of years ago I felt the same as you. Haven’t seen the other film, Midnight Cowboy, never thought I needed to but that may be a result of starting out as a Republican. I was never a Young Republican when I was young, though; those people made me twitch. I came to my senses when Reagan ran for Prez, when his platform was a 180 from what he said when he was governor of my fair state.
Ruckus
@FlipYrWhig:
Yeah, I’m not sure any generation has a lock on being assholes.
opie jeanne
@Bill: Well, fuck you very much.
Tom Q
Well, I was 17 when Easy Rider came out, and even at that age I thought it was shallow. Only the emergence of Jack gave the film any particular value.
But screw anyone throwing Midnight Cowboy into the same basket. My absolute favorite movie in those years; saw it three times. I don’t see how you call it nihilistic. The desperate friendship between the two characters made everybody cry, back when.
opie jeanne
@Tom Q: Ok, so maybe I should see it now. Probably wouldn’t have appreciated it back then.
piratedan
well it roughly follows the same timeline as waterboarding…. Easy Rider 1969, Fall of Saigon 1975
Anya
@Cat Lady: His Irish eyes?
gpleigh
Jesus Fucking Christ.
NamelessGenXer
@Bill:
ding ding ding ding ding
Actually, the purpose of the radical idealogue generation in the historical cycle is to destroy the old institutions, and they’ve done a heckuva job, Brownie.
Ruckus
@Bill:
Ahhh, the cry of every generation. Probably since time started.
Some of us do know not only how to step out of the way of the next generation but that we need to do so.
Ija
@beltane:
I thought Fonda’s beef with Obama is from the left? In other words, more firebagger than teabagger. He’s pissed Obama didn’t punish BP enough after the oil spill, even calling Obama a traitor.
He’s an idiot who deserves a visit from the Secret Service, obviously, but I don’t think you can blame the GOP or teabaggers for him.
stuckinred
@Ruckus: What exactly does that mean? I’m not a generation I’m a person and I’m not stepping in or out of anyone’s way. It’s all a bunch of whiny bullshit.
ruemara
@Cat Lady:
I hear the President is near.
gil mann
@Ija:
I don’t know about “from the left,” exactly, but yeah, after looking into that a little I’m thinking he’s a more independent sort of nuts.
Nellcote
@Bill:
So you’re supporting the Ryan Medicare Plan?
Ruckus
@stuckinred:
Agreed that bill’s comment was a bunch of whinny bullshit.
Now on with my point.
Are you doing anything to teach a skill to the generations behind you? Have you raised kids? And let them make their own choices and learn from their mistakes?
Have you mentored someone at least a generation younger than you in some way? Do you try to get people a generation or more behind you interested in politics?
Are you going to work till you drop? Or retire and watch the world go by?
I’m an old white man and I sure don’t like everyone in my generation or some of the crap said about the time frame I was born into. But I’m still part of it. I was born, I live, I will die. And other than the continuing to live part, not of this was/will be my choice. History, culture, whatever puts me in the boomer generation. I’m OK with that.
Bill however can go fuck his self.
AxelFoley
Easy Rider – came out in 1969
Vietnam – ended in 1975
Yeah, Pete, you stopped the war alright.
And what is it with these old supposed lefty crackas from the 1960s spewing their bullshit today? Fuck him and Jon Voight.
The 1960s ended over 40 years ago. I’m tired of fuckers on the left and right still fighting the culture wars from a decade that ended before I was born.
amk
rich, pampered, drugged out white dood talking gangsta in the land of make believe wannabe killahs. Hope the secret service pays him a visit.
bjacques
We must all learn to live together as brothers or die like ketchup-soaked nonactors in a bad biker movie.
– The Golden Turkey Awards, Chapter “Worst Biker Movie”
AuldBlackJack
It’s just bizarre that he references Easy Rider which ends with a couple of DFH bikers, one played by Fonda, getting blown away by a couple of shotgun toting rednecks.
Sounds like in the remake he’s planning he wants to play the redneck.
lushboi
The coming war between the haves and the have nots? Where the hell have you been? That ship has already sailed buddy.
Paul in KY
@LowProfileinGA: I hope the Secret Service apprises him (or his caretakers) of that point.
dave
Fonda’s comments are too general and cryptic to derive any meaning from at all (other than that he is in some unclear way critical of Obama). Yet that hasn’t stopped ABL from concluding that he is calling for the assassination of Obama.
This is what I hate most about the internet. When faced with ambiguous statements we all rush to give them the most offensive spin we can.
You know what mature intelligent people would do about Fonda’s comments? They would withhold judgment until a fuller explanation was provided by Fonda. Alternatively, they would give such comments no further thought since, seriously, who gives a flying fuck about Peter Fonda?
But don’t mind me. I am just a “concern troll” and this is all great fun. Carry on.
pumpalope
Beltain: Hate to burst your imaginary world view, Peter Fonda? a GOP teabagger?. All the Fondas are committed hard core leftist. Jane sat on anti-aircraft gun that shot down US planes in Vietnam. I gotta believe Peter belives someone isn’t leftist enough. As for anal leakage, try keeping your mouth shut. 1. you’ll keep cleaner 2. you’ll appear more intelligent.
Paul in KY
@dave: Let’s just do an exercise with Mr. Fonda’s (a person with loads of money) comments: ‘I’m training my grandchildren to use long-range rifles,” said the actor, 71. “For what purpose? Well, I’m not going to say the words ‘Dave’, but …” He added, enigmatically: “It’s more of a thought process than an actuality, but we are heading for a major conflict between the haves and the have nots…’
So I assume you’d not feel uneasy in the least if Mr. Fonda said those comments about YOU?
AxelFoley
Thanks, Paul.
Dave, STFU.
Paul in KY
@AxelFoley: No problem, Axel. Glad to help.