Jane Fonda's Recidivism: Get a life!

Hanoi Jane, America's Sweetheart's image on tee-shirt

Jane Fonda, aka Hanoi Jane, finally came clean and so much as admitted that she really is unrepentant. She proved it by wearing a tee-shirt displaying a defiant and young Fonda at work in Vietnam, demoralizing U.S. troops in 1972 when interviewing and discussing her role in a new movie.

I thought she actually apologized for nosing in on foreign affairs some time ago, didn't she?

Evidently, she didn't really mean it--her fingers must have been crossed behind that yellow-striped back of hers--because these days, her response when asked about her wearing the inappropriate tee-shirt is, "They (the vets) need to get a life."

Tragic.

What kind of ego, what kind of low character does (and continues to do) what she has done? Think about it.

Wearing this kiss off tee-shirt is not just a silly, sad and unexpected response to one to two questions about an indiscretion of youth. It is a painful revelation of a rather immature, although aging woman who seems incapable of telling the truth.

Point in fact. When I was in my early thirties, in the 80s, I used her exercise books and tapes. They were helpful and extremely challenging. There were two or three of them, one of them aerobics and another was a step routine, the other I can't remember. I probably worked out to them two to three times a week, when I wasn't running four miles. Indeed, I was in pretty good shape. Frankly, however, I didn't carry on this heavy routine just for health's sake; I was addicted to it as well as using it to support my eating habit. Having always loved eating, it worked fine. But there were always areas that didn't respond as well. Fonda's body, though, always was perfect. Right on, I thought to myself. If she can do it, I can do it too. I just worked harder.

Fonda to Vets, "Get a life."

Someone might ask, well, if you didn't respect Fonda, why in the world would you buy her tapes? I'm not sure, except maybe I thought she had changed, or that I could forgive her. I don't know really. But I did know I liked the results, so I stayed with her. It was stunningly obvious the workouts she performed were working for her. Her brand had changed from traitor to harmless celebrity person in a leotard with pink and purple stripes.I can't believe I was so unprincipled at the time. I bought it all.

Much later, come to find out (no one knew), Ms. Fonda was in and out of plastic surgery suites for all kinds of liposuction and tummy tucks, arm contouring, you name it, she had it done. So, not only was she a traitor who refused to own up to her treasonous behavior, she was a snake oil salesman making zillions on her new brands of self-improvement. In the meantime, she was fooling vulnerable women into thinking all they had to do was one more rep of this or that exercise and they'll look like Jane.

No one looks like Jane except what the unauthentic Jane asks her doctors to make her look like. I feel sorry for the women who are dealing with body dysmorphic disorder, anorexia or who had eating disorders. She really did a number on them. I honestly don't see the difference between Fonda and some of the baseball and football players who use steroids. It's all a sham any way you slice it.

Then there's the unauthentic time when she became a Christian. As a Christian myself, I can't comment on that more than it seems if one is truly repentant for one's missing the mark, should not one stand up foursquare and admit it, instead if insulting the people whom you have hurt? It seems to be another deep flaw in Fonda's character, or perhaps it's a developmental issue--that she would consciously demean and attack Vietnam veterans and/or those who have already been so sorely affected by that damnable war. It's as if they're ex-husbands or someone she has total disregard and disgust for. They don't need a replay of her hard hearted treatment. There's nothing like humility when faced with public disgrace. She should learn from that, but her ego is so huge, I can't see that ever happening.

Moreover, her portrayal of Nancy Reagan in the above mentioned movie, "The Butler," holds a strange irony for me. Ms. Fonda said in an interview that "...she happened to know that Mrs. Reagan knew she was playing her in the movie..." She says this with an almost teenaged nanner nanners as she relates breathlessly this fact to the interviewer.

Ironically, it seems she yearns for a type of legitimacy by suggesting that because Mrs. Reagan not only knows about her role, she encourages it somehow. What difference does that make? In other words, Mrs. Reagan, because she thinks you're a good selection to play a cameo role, somehow approves of your dismal form of participatory politics? It's like the Capitol One credit card ad where Alec Baldwin is insisting because he's played a pilot in a movie he's capable of flying an airplane. It's really Freudian when you look at it.

This is so Fonda. I'm ashamed of myself for spending any money on her. But I can repent by advising Ms. Fonda that she is going upstream and will die on the rocks if she continues her head strong defiance. Some huge and uncomfortable truths are always at the end of big stories such as hers. This type of ego driven strutting has all the authenticity of a lightening storm at Disneyland. The real stuff comes when there aren't any lies left to tell.

Thanks for the read.

Artists and sentinels: epilogue

The end of the story

My father and mother, Andrew and Lois Layman, moved from a gorgeous 3500 square foot Dilby Tudor in Kansas City, Missouri to a ten-acre farm in Johnson County, Kansas. The place had some major barns and chicken houses and a lovely redo house. They came there with me and my older brother, their second family. Their first family, my sibs, were married and off on their own. We arrived when I was in second grade. Dad commuted 25 miles to his office (the plant) in KC.

Dad, aka Chief Layman, was with Bendix for 30 years. He was active in Lions Club, a 32nd Degree Mason, involved in Toastmasters, Managers Club, an elder in Country Club Christian Church in Kansas City, along with endless other farm and community related activities such as sharing pastures with neighbors, labor and old tricks he had learned as a boy. Our neighbors respected him because of his know how and that he wasn't another one of "those gentlemen farmers."

I think my love for the outdoors came from my tagging along with him on those outings to the neighbors to pick up livestock or go to the wheat fields to take in grain. My dad also taught me how to shoot, although guns were not a big deal in our house. We had a 22-caliber rifle that was kept over the back door transom on the porch and that was it. I think a broom would have been more efficient--and quicker.

My love of sports came from my time with Dad. We'd go to KU basketball games together, enjoyed pro and college football and shared together the general love of sports. That carried on till the day he died. I could always count on my dad to talk about sports with me.

Living in the country was an adjustment for me. I was afraid in the middle of the night. The casualness of my folks' attitude toward security stunned me. Yes, they sort of locked the back door in summer with one of those things that looks like a question mark that hangs on a loop; however, the door was a screen door. I realized later it was Russians my dad was after, not Clutter murderers. I suppose he was confident he could handle anything that came along, or that the odds were such that nothing would happen.

I did have so many advantages, such as owning a horse and living a wonderful existence in a beautiful woodland with hills and valleys. The Native American past of the area provided plenty of arrowheads and artifacts for kids to dig for and hunt. Exploration was a large part of my early life.

After my brother went to college, I became an only child for five years. That was not a bad thing. My folks kept up the chase and taxi service during that time--not an easy thing for parents who had an active kid late in life. How many cheerleading practices and games, how many newspaper meetings?

Then, thankfully for everyone concerned, I went off to college.

Mother and Daddy were alone, for the first time in how many years. Daddy retired and they kept up their "normal" routine, although I'm sure the adjustment was enormous for my mother. They bickered about moving to the desert in Arizona for the winters, about moving to town, about this and that. Meanwhile, they were visiting their children who were scattered about the country, enjoying themselves. I wish I could say that after so many years in retirement they figured it out. Regretfully, that Air Stream simply wasn't in the cards. Not in this lifetime.

It was almost summer, a hot and humid, mid-afternoon. Dad was mowing a neighbor's field--a flat place between a marble quarry and a hedge row where I used to ride my horse, Billy--about two miles away from the farm. It seems he had lain down under a tree, the tractor gearbox in park with the mower blades still spinning, his straw, panama-style hat on his chest, and his hands were clasped, fingers intertwined across his midsection as if resting, or maybe praying. There, under a silvery leafed sugar maple, he died.

One of our dear neighbor's teenaged sons found him.

The date was June 15th, 1978. The following Sunday was Father's Day.

My greatest fear had come true. He was gone.

Thanks for the read.

No more Clintons, Bushes, Cheneys, Obamas, et al.

Legacies. We're surrounded by them.

They're psuedo hibernating, some of them, in their respectable foundations--like Hillary at the Clinton Foundation, coming out only to sniff the air, clearly avoiding Washington snits, and then returning just long enough to have people wonder, "Where is Hillary?". Don't forget Chelsea.

It is in these lairs that the betters among us fulfill their beauty/fitness routines to get in shape for the fight. This foundation scheme is very convenient and is indeed a literal platform from which to spring forward towards the biggest fight of them all: America's presidency.

Then, there's Jeb Bush. And the nephew, George Bush. Why is it, everyone's a candidate, just like Grandpa and Uncle Georges? Enough already. Can't they find real jobs?

Liz Cheney? Okay, I guess. Another legacy, as if she somehow deserves to be where she is by virtue of genealogy.

And one Obama is enough for anyone.

What I like to see in the Republican Party are the new lines and new faces. I like when they kick the president where he lives and try to stop his illegal executive pronouncements like delays in Affordable Care Act.

I enjoy watching the Legislative branch of our government actually performing its job, riding herd over the Executive branch. It's absolutely thrilling to me to see our freshmen congressmen stand up and speak truth to power...and then follow through again and again. These new Turks are serious and seem uninterested in the core power of the old GOP and their rules. I admit to having to renege on my view of nepotism because the son of Ron Paul, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, is tearing up Washington. He's running for president. Then there's Senators Ted Cruz from Texas and  Mike Lee of Utah, both attorneys, who are convinced we can name this Affordable Healthcare Act a turkey before it even gets started, and hoping to defund the entire thing.

It is interesting that the President is using the guilt card as he stumps for implementation of the ACA.  He likes to say that we Republicans are denying some 30 million people from receiving their coverage. Of course, his metrics are as phony as his rhetoric. What he should be saying is this: your coverage is going to cost you yearly anywhere between $6500 individually and $12,500 for a family. And you have no choice. Those are the real facts. The old guard in the GOP seem to be oblivious to these issues while they hang on to the maddening status quo. In other words, they've given up, as usual, to the drumbeat that the Progressives have kept going, as if there's no other option.

In addition, considering perception in politics is reality, we in the GOP simply cannot risk poor PR--again--by shutting down the government. Surely this matter can be played more deftly than we've done so in the past. Indeed, some Republicans are arguing that the last shut down wasn't all that bad, that we gained seats in Congress, and it all came out in the wash. Be that as it may, the perception overall, was unfortunate, and the low information voter remembers those low lights, instead of the principled debate that the old GOP put forth. One still hears how the bad Republicans blinked, while the Dems and President Clinton played it to the hilt. Let's not make that mistake again.

Rinos need to understand once again that compromising with Progressives is a fool's errand. Some of the new blood in Congress gets that. Whether it be about Obamacare or immigration, we've been had over and over, and the new strong hearts of the party are correct in their impulses to stand firm. Out of all of these new voices, we can hear some strains of exciting and encouraging arguments, while the old is so old that it creaks from its constant preoccupation with twentieth century ideas and solutions, most of which belongs in a trash heap.

The new, on the other hand--those in the GOP who understand governing from strength, are on the cusp of change, ready to relieve the constrictive hold of the middletons in our midst. It is time not to compromise for compromise's sake; rather, the time has come for the GOP to acknowledge a new electorate with a new understanding of what it is to be a twenty-first century citizen of the United States.

New leadership, new ideas and new policies are needed to carry forth a reborn America--one which recalls the greatness of our country--first in the world in all things--as it used to be when we were not ashamed and guilt ridden because of the words of a few minority bosses and race hustlers.

In my theory of "Everything's Wrong in America," a huge axis change must occur. That begins with regular people beginning to understand the old ways of establishment politics. Of course, term limits are a part of that change. The professional politician is the bane of our lives.

Meanwhile, HRA, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is poised to be coronated Queen.

Dear Lord, I'm so sick of her. Why must we have these infernal personalities who are no more caring of you and I than she is of a bunch of animals in a zoo? It is the structure of the system, as well as their deep egos and greed (just how much are the Clintons worth now?), that we are subjected to the constant barrage of their politics and activities.

The Democrat Party has become nothing more than a clown car pouring out entrenched, tired, shameful personalities as old and predictable as ever. The Republicans? Well, fortunately, we've somehow found it in our beings to elect a few stars.

Out with the old; in with the new.

Thanks for the read.