Jan Fonda just gave a barnburner of a speech at the SAG awards, and every one of you should watch it when it becomes available.
Fucking hell put her in Schumer’s seat.
Jane Fonda
by John Cole| 93 Comments
This post is in: 2025 Activism
Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Peak wingnut was a lie.
Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.
There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.
The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.
The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.
Let there be snark.
Consistently wrong since 2002
Let’s not be the monsters we hate.
Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.
It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.
In after Baud. Damn.
Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.
That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.
Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.
Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.
If you can’t control your emotions, someone else will.
Giving in to doom is how authoritarians win.
We still have time to mess this up!
A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.
If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.
Our messy unity will be our strength.
American History and Black History can not be separated.
They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.
Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.
Medium Cool – Top Ten Best Actors (of All Time?)
zhena gogolia
Deleted until I remember how to link.
zhena gogolia
Kamala Harris gave a great speech that baud linked to and some of us wanted frontpaged.
Nukular Biskits
Any links?
John S.
@Nukular Biskits:
Not yet. I’m sure it will be up soon enough. There’s already a handful of news stories about it.
zhena gogolia
@Nukular Biskits: I can’t find it yet.
Fair Economist
Everybody does something well; nobody does everything well. I expect Schumer would be a bad actor and that Fonda would be bad at Senate rules and smoothtalking recalcitrant Senators. We don’t need everybody to be great a firebrand speeches, and that’s a good thing, because most aren’t! I’m glad Fonda gave a great speech, but it doesn’t help us to attack any of the millions who don’t or can’t, especially not top leadership. This is one of the big reasons Democrats have low favorables; Republicans attack Democrats, and Democrats attack Democrats, so normies think there’s something wrong with Democrats.
zhena gogolia
@Fair Economist: You’re encapsulating the Great Balloon Juice Debate.
Elizabelle
@Fair Economist: prezactly.
Not into awards shows. Good for Jane Fonda for making one stand out.
cmorenc
Great speech or not, Jane Fonda kind of trainwrecked her ability to be an effective spokesperson back in the Vietnam War era for coming across as not merely an anti-war protester, but for seeming to be too much a cheerleader for the Viet Cong / NVA at a time when hundreds of thousands of American soldiers were being put at lethal risk of being killed by them, including a couple of my high school classmates whose names are on “the Wall” in DC. Yeah, the Vietnam war was one of the most heinous mistakes of American foreign and military policy, and we’re battling a domestic enemy in Trump and Musk just as heinous in their own way, and Jane Fonda 2025 may be a devastatingly accurate truth-teller in 2025, but she’ll never outrun her handicap of being “Hanoi Jane” as a spokesperson to a broad audience of Americans. AOC would be a much better, more effective D replacement for Schumer in the Senate.
John S.
LOL, I love when Cole trolls his own blog. This thread would be raging if it wasn’t night time on a Sunday for the majority of folks on the east coast.
Elizabelle
Thank dog this wasn’t an obituary.
Jay
@cmorenc:
Jane Fonda’s greatest sin was being right when most Americans were wrong. Dead wrong.
Jackie
Oh geez…
The nightmare just keeps getting worse.
Joy in FL
@Elizabelle: I thought that, too. I’m so glad it’s a speech.
Bostondreams
Another bad actor now in government. Dan Freaking Bongino deputy director of the FBI.
Eric S.
@Elizabelle: That was my initial concern when I saw the title.
Jay
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/germany-election-1.7466364
cmorenc
@Jay: I was prime draft age through Vietnam, and only by sheer luck of my birthday being #330 in the very first draft did I avoid going. A classmate who did serve in ‘Nam described the experience of being a combat jungle runt as being a year-long luridly colorful endless nightmare, with lingering mental wreckage to this day, together with the couple of mates on the Wall who died, their lives wasted in particularly gruesome ways. I was a contemporary war protester back c. 1970, you don’t have to convince me that Fonda being anti-war was correct. But she did get a bit too carried away with seeming to cheerlead the N Vietnamese in killing Americans, and there are far too many folks alive who remember *that* about her, and she is too easy for the GOP to paint as a villian, even today, no matter how righteous her anti-Trump speech was..
bbleh
@Fair Economist: I expect Schumer would be a bad actor and that Fonda would be bad at Senate rules and smoothtalking recalcitrant Senators.
Concur with this part at least. I’m certainly not the last to dunk on our elected leadership — with a handful of notable exceptions, they really aren’t doing even the minimum imo — but legislative leadership is qualitatively different from, well, “wartime” leadership, and what makes someone good at one almost necessarily works against them for the other.
I’d like to hear a LOT more very pointed speechifying from Dem Congressional leaders — they certainly know how to talk! — and a lot more willingness to just put it out there, rather than, I dunno, focus-grouping stuff for several days until it comes out both anodyne AND way too late, or worse, saying nothing at all for fear of the flying monkeys.
But neither Schumer nor Jeffries will ever lead a charge. We need different people for that.
Jay
@cmorenc:
Funny how always wrong, ahistorical Reich Wing American Propaganda used to dominate the US, now it’s ruZZian propaganda, 24/7.
ArchTeryx
@Bostondreams: At this point it’s safe to assume TCFG will staff every single Executive Branch position with either useful idiots, demolition experts, or people there to persecute everyone that isn’t Aryan. And nobody in Congress is going to stop them.
This was pretty much a done deal the moment we failed to regain the Senate. The Great Balloon Juice Debate may help everyone cope in the short run, but the end result is preordained.
Starfish (she/her)
Can Republicans say no to the stupidest people (Dan Bongino deputy director of the FBI) getting jobs in this administration challenge?
cmorenc
@Jay: It’s fact, not propaganda that Jane Fonda went to Hanoi in 1972 to protest the Vietnam War, which was still hotly ongoing until 1975. Even as someone who became virulently anti-war myself, including many domestic protests, that was too much for me and many other otherwise strongly antiwar folks at the time.
Elizabelle
@Eric S.: Glad to see you commenting here.
@Joy in FL: Yes. Sigh of relief.
John S.
@Starfish (she/her):
Nope. And they aren’t even going to try. This is reverse DEI in action: hire the least skilled, with no experience or qualifications other than being a straight Christian white man (with very few exceptions).
different-church-lady
Shit, now Cole is going to leave the front page…
Jackie
@Starfish (she/her):
No.
Apparently their families are being threatened with death threats (or so they claim) by MAGA and Musk if they don’t comply… so FFOTUS is getting whoever/whatever he wants.
NotMax
Goin’ Dylanesque.
Jane to the left of me*
Cheney to the right
Here I am
Stuck in the middle with you
;)
*not necessarily a 100% true statement – artistic license in play
different-church-lady
@NotMax: Uhhh… Stealers Wheel.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Jackie:
If they’re so afraid, they should resign
Eolirin
@bbleh: They shouldn’t be leading the charge, it’s not their job.
EtA: To expand this, the kind of action we’re going to need is the kind of action that gets you arrested. Our congressional leadership needs to not be the ones doing it. We’d cripple what little power we have in the legislature.
I’m also really getting sick of the idea that speeches are some how going to save us.
This is not a moment that requires persuasion. We’re going to be facing collective action challenges. We’re going to need organization and collaboration and people doing hard work behind the scenes. Speeches help people to feel better, or vindicated, or fired up, and that matters, but I really wish we could stop confusing things that make us feel better for things that actually make things better.
We need the former so we can better do the latter, but it’s not an ends in itself. The latter is way more important to success.
Sister Golden Bear
@cmorenc:
The vast majority of Americans are far too young to remember. Not saying Republican won’t try to dirty her up about it, but it’s ancient history to anyone who’s a Gen Xer and younger.
NotMax
@different-church-lady
Memory fart on my end. Partially because of the Dylanesque cadence.
;)
Percysowner
@NotMax:
Not only Dylanesque, but also the theme song from Grace and Frankie, the show Jane and Lily Tomlin starred in on Netflix, very apropos.
John S.
@Eolirin:
No matter what side you’re on, it’s all about the vibes now.
Too many people no longer deal in facts and ideas. It’s all about how they feel.
John S.
@Sister Golden Bear:
Yup. “Hanoi Jane” doesn’t mean a thing to most people under 60.
WaterGirl
@Jay: You can’t blame them.
debit
@Elizabelle: Seconded. My heart sank before I read on.
Jackie
@WaterGirl: 100% agreed. I don’t trust our country anymore; I sure don’t expect our soon-to-be-former allies to. <broken heart emoji>
Jay
@cmorenc:
Yes, she went to Hanoi, visited some anti-aircraft defenses. Did she shoot a gun at B52’s that were cluster bombing civilians, infrastructure, dams, rice production.
Nope.
So,
By now you are probably aware that all the actual Vietnam experts, in the US and France, advised the US in the 1950’s, not to back the French, the war was not winnable, and continued that advise until the US was forced out in 1973.
While 282,000 Americans died in the Amero- Vietnam War, 3,595,000 Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians died, and US actions lead to the rise of Pol Pot and Year Zero, another 2 million dead.
And Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians still die from American weapons 51 years later.
And the US never could have won, because they backed the wrong side, kinda like how the US is now backing ruZZia.
If you are in Alaska or California, get out now, Dolt 47 and Felon Husk are going to give them back to Putin.
Darkrose
Well, that was terrifying: I saw the headline on my RSS reader and thought, “Oh no–not her!” But it’s a good thing, not an obit.
ETA: I see I’m not the only one.
Eolirin
@John S.: It is crazy making.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@John S.:
I got a front row seat to that today with an older female coworker (not the one I’ve mentioned before), a Trump voter. She and another coworker was complaining about customers with EBT cards buying steaks, crab legs, soda, candy and such with food stamps. I told her we’ve got bigger problems to worry about than penny ante stuff like that, like Elon Musk picking our pockets by wrecking the federal government.
“Oh I like Elon Musk, he’s getting rid of fraud and waste.”
I bluntly told her what he’s doing is illegal and a coup. Got literally no reaction except a blank stare. I then asked her how firing half the FAA is “getting rid of fraud and waste”.
“I wasn’t talking about that.”
Didn’t even fucking deny that was happening at the FAA for example, just that wasn’t what she meant
Then she was fretting about Social Security running out of money.
What. The. Fuck.
ETA: The other one couldn’t even conceive of the idea that the uber wealthy (1%) are oppressing and screwing over the rest of us. It was very disturbing.
And the older one actually said, “Democrat Party”. I’ve never heard that in real life before, only out of the mouths of R politicians and pundits
chemiclord
@bbleh: There’s a degree that they have to focus group shit for days, because their own electorate gleefully bashes them over the head if they don’t say things exactly the right way.
Hell, I watched an argument over one of Hakeem Jeffries’s social media statements, but not over the content, mind you. Oh no, the content of the statement was fine. They were damn near coming to rhetorical blows over the goddamn sentence order.
So, if you wonder why a lot of Democrats take an awfully long time to make largely anodyne statements, look around you, and you’ll figure out why.
John S.
@Eolirin:
Yes it is. And it is extremely difficult for overly cerebral folks like myself to navigate.
I keep trying to correct my teenagers who seem to have this coded into their language. They say “I feel” when what they really mean is “I think”. I’m losing the battle for clarity.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@WaterGirl:
No, you can’t. What concerns me is AfD improving it’s vote share so much, even if it fell short of what party leaders thought they’d get
danielx
@Jackie:
Fuck me running…Julius Streicher Junior as deputy director of the FBI.
John S.
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Welcome to the new world where “liking” Elon Musk is completely severed from his actions. Where Donald Trump’s actions are Joe Biden’s consequences (because he still can’t STFU about him).
I suspect this kind of shit is what caused the Vulcans and Romulans to become two separate civilizations.
Eolirin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): If this is their ceiling, it’s something Germany can deal with. It’s a good bit less than what National Rally got in France, iirc.
cmorenc
@Jay: Agree with you on all points about the dreadful, lethal folly of the Vietnam War. Agree with what Fonda said in her speech today. Only disagreement is that her unfortunately overzealous trip to Hanoi still undermines the receptiveness of too many people still alive to accept her as a spokesperson or Senator. True, a substantial portion of the US electorate was born after Vietnam and isn’t yet aware of that – but there are plenty of contemporary GOP propagandists who would effectively use that to throw up a wall of poisonous static arond her if she became a Senate candidate. AOC doesn’t have that baggage.
Melancholy Jaques
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I remember having slightly less infuriating conversations back in the Reagan days, when I was young & dumb enough to believe there was any point in talking to Republican voters.
TS
@Jay:
Just wanted to see that again. 100% agree. She seriously damaged her career to do the right thing. Not so many are willing to do this.
Darkrose
@Elizabelle: I don’t like watching awards shows. I live for Luke on HauteLeMode discussing and dissecting red carpet looks after the awards shows. I’ve always been a frustrated costume designer–I went into lighting design because I can’t draw and can’t sew–so looking at clothes and what they say fascinates me. I also have a major competence kink and Luke knows his shit when it comes to fashion, couture, and art; I always learn stuff from him, even if I don’t agree with his takes. It’s a fun diversion for 30 minutes.
Jay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
When the Wall came down, the Lauffer Curve went up. What was East Germany was never properly denazified, (many Nazi’s went straight from being Nazi’s to being Good Communists), East Germany always lagged behind in development, and because of the low wages and rents, it became popular to hire Turkish visa workers.
Add in targeted social media disinfo,……………….
Saw a US.Gov poll graphic earlier today. Opinion vs. Reality.
Americans on average, believe that 20% of the US population, is Trans,
The reality is less that 1% of Americans are Trans.
It has become, really easily, for a majority of people for people to not live in reality.
Of 20 questions on the poll, the closest opinion matched reality, was a 15% gap between reality and opinion.
Jay
@Eolirin:
AfD’s high mark was 24% several years ago.
Jay
@cmorenc:
Jane Fonda is not running for office.
Jackie
YAY for President Zelensky!
I wish our politicians had half the balls Zelensky has with defying FFOTUS. I hang my head in shame as an American.
Quiltingfool
@zhena gogolia: This is very OT, but could you message me at my Etsy store? Just click on my nym. I’ve got a photo to show you!
Quiltingfool
@Elizabelle: Very OT, but could you message me at my Etsy store? Just click my nym. I’ve got a photo to show you!
frosty
@Jay: Do you have a link for this? I’d like to read it.
Jay
@frosty:
The US.Gov survey?
frosty
@Jay: I think so? The Opinion vs Reality survey.
No One of Consequence
I’m holding out for Chachi to be appointed head of the CIA or NSA or some other high-level intelligence Tzar post…
“I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.” – Thomas Jefferson
Not with a bang, but rather an OompaLoompa…
-NOoC
geg6
Not to mention, she looks fabulous. I’d kill for that dress.
Fair Economist
@Sister Golden Bear:
The Republican Wurlitzer is good at keeping long defunct bogeybears going. Not as out of date, but they’ve still got everybody going against Communism, which has been pretty much dead since 1991.
Jay
@frosty:
Quick look on open tabs says no, but I will keep looking.
Elizabelle
@Quiltingfool: Just did so. Thank you!!
Elizabelle
@geg6: Lucky that you are on this coast, then.
She does look spectacular.
Elizabelle
@Darkrose: Will check out that site. Thank you. I love costumes and the history of fashion design.
Looked at some of the red carpet photos, and people looked elegant, with one miss. Liked the dresses and tuxedos/alternatives.
geg6
Also, thank FSM for Jane Fonda. She gave a speech too many of our so-called leaders are afraid to give. They prefer to be followers and leave leading up to celebrities and average voters. They’re too busy sending me texts to send them money. Sorry, I gave all I could last fall and you blew it. I need every dollar I have to survive this apocalyptic timeline we’re in.
hitchhiker
@cmorenc: um, she’s 87 yrs old & not running for anything.
I understood the blogfather to be suggesting that someone capable of delivering a speech like that is who we ought to have in the party leadership, especially in the Senate, where people get drowsy just looking at Schumer.
Jay
@hitchhiker:
One of the things you gotta love about “Merica,
A presidential candidate, (Nixon), the Chennault’s, the Diem Dictatorship conspire against US Law, engage in treason, to sink the Paris Accords, kill another 200,000+ “Mercans, over 2 million south Asians,
but the actor who went to North Vietnam and expressed sympathy,
Is the Evil One.
LMFAO.
Geminid
@chemiclord: I think Hakeem Jeffries holds a press conference every week. He takes a lot of questions and he doesn’t group them, he answers them right then and there. Besides C-SPAN, I don’t think any cable networks c them, but I expect they broadcast parts. They’d be worth checking out on YouTube if you want to know what House Democrsts are up to and Jeffries’ views on what House Republicans are up to.
I mainly just follow the print reporting about them. Which reminds me, I need to start following Jamie Dupree again. He’s a very good Capitol Hill reporter.
mrmoshpotato
Jane Fonda 2025 SAG Speech
hitchhiker
@Jay:
Yes, indeed. She’s somehow still the symbol for stupidity and cruelty, because she tried to use her fame to end a war that was known throughout the administration as a failure. There are still people who think that POWs were tortured into telling her everything was great, and I guess there always will be. It’s just one of many lies told to make sure we don’t forget who really made us lose that war: Jane Fonda!
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@hitchhiker:
Fonda herself has said that the propaganda trip was a stupid thing to do that very likely did more harm than good. Why is it impossible for others to acknowledge that?
brantl
@Jay: 1000% this Jane was exactly right.
sab
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: I agree with her later assessment. The trip made her seem like an entitled bimbo instead of the serious person she actually is.
My husband’s family was anti-war but had their oldest kid drafted and deployed in Vietnam at that time. They thought she endangered their child.
TBone
I have always (well, since I was old enough to be aware of her) adored Jane. I signed up to her Fire Drill Fridays climate change alerts and virtually participated on Fascistbook in the Before Times. She is truly a SHERO and she actually moved to an apartment in D.C. so she could hold those Fire Drills with special guests and be arrested! I recommend those videos as well as this new barn burner!
TBone
@Jay: at a local V.F.W. outpost in Hicksville (Lenni, PA) DelCo, they have stickers in every toilet to this day so you have to piss on Jane. I got kicked out of there more than once hahaha.
TBone
@cmorenc: watch this 1972 documentary film also starring Donald Sutherland that Raven hipped me to and see if you change your attitude. It’s a requirement before you make such statements ever again. F.T.A. Show:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/F.T.A.
Bulgakov
Ima leave this here –
“He’s not standing up”: Protesters want Hakeem Jeffries to lead an aggressive opposition to Trump
https://www.salon.com/2025/02/21/hes-not-standing-up-want-hakeem-jeffries-to-lead-an-aggressive-opposition-to/
TBone
@Nukular Biskits: I still can’t find the entire speech unedited or without a narration spin. GAH!!!
TBone
Am so sighing with disappointment over some of these Hanoi Jane comments saying we Gen Xers don’t know or remember. This one very fucking much does remember and will honor Jane Fonda for her bravery, courage, spirit, and ACTivism until the end of my time on this planet.
TBone
Women on Fire Department 🔥
https://firedrillfridays.org/about/
Learn it, people!!!
TBone
I will never STFU about this. Never.
TBone
@Bulgakov: do you need some dick jokes?
TBone
@Percysowner: a favorite clip
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HHF9ONATi_U
Anyway
@TBone:
Jane Fonda 2025 SAG Speech
This has her whole speech – after JLD’s intro – about 4:30 minutes in …
TBone
@Anyway: THANK YOU EVER SO.
TBone
@Anyway: you have my undying gratitude. I am sprinkling that EVERYWHERE today!
Emily B.
I love Jane Fonda and we need her fighting with us. But not in the Senate. Enough with the gerontocracy.
TBone
Respect your elders is still a thing, as is the fire of earned wisdom.