They still hate Jane, but maybe a little bit less

Ever since Jane Fonda apologized to God and the American Legion for her nasty little cameo appearance in the Vietnam War, many of the veterans who hated her a lot now hate her less.

One who e-mails me often whenever the name Fonda appears in print seemed almost relieved in his last message that she is continuing to apologize. I think he feels that 30 years of hyperventilating is long enough.

What with her autobiography in print and her reappearance on the big screen, she seems to be everywhere these days, hustling both her book and her movie, which allows her ample opportunity to be either forgiven or despised anew.

I caught her on Bravo TV’s “Actors Studio” and she looked pretty good, which must irk the Fonda-haters even more. Many others, of course, have long forgotten what she did, and still others, not yet born in 1972, aren’t even altogether certain who she is, unless they’ve seen reruns of “Barbarella” on television.

To remind and inform us of her “treachery,” Internet websites offer dissertations of her trip to Hanoi during the Vietnam War and photographs of her seated on a North Vietnam antiaircraft gun. Because she still had what we call the “sex kitten” look of earlier films, it made the photograph even more galling. She was our sex kitten manning an enemy gun.

Many regarded her as a traitor for giving aid and comfort to the enemy, but she has always maintained that she was just trying to bring the war to an end. A lot of people were doing the same thing, but (1) they weren’t movie stars and (2) they didn’t go to Hanoi and sit on communism’s lap, so to speak.

She even took Tom Hayden with her. I don’t know what he was doing but whatever it was, no one noticed.

Later in life, she became a born-again Christian and her mea culpas over the Vietnam incident were so sincere they could have been accompanied by liturgical music, or at least an Oscar nomination for best leading role of an actress trying to squirm out of her past. It didn’t work.

There were no hosannas following the performance, only reminders that she was still around. And then when she was included in a 1999 Barbara Walters special, “100 Years of Great Women,” the spit hit the fan. I wrote about it in the mild manner characteristic of my attitudes and was set upon with such vitriol that for several days my hands shook so badly that I could hardly hold a martini without spilling it.

And now this. The biography, “My Life So Far,” and the costarring role with Jennifer Lopez in “Monster-in-Law” have brought her back like a bad case of impetigo. People magazine, chronicler of the rich and useless, labeled the two stars as J.Lo and J.Fo., a case, one supposes, of infamy achieving pop status.

One would think that with her reacquired stature, Fonda would be edging further away from her image as Hanoi Jane. But there are still those who, like Pavlov’s dog, continue to respond to her name by drooling with rage. One man waited in line for 90 minutes at a Kansas City book signing not to obtain her signature on his copy of “My Life” but to spit in her face.

He was identified as 54-year-old Michael Smith, who said he did it because Fonda had been spitting in the faces of war veterans for years. While spraying one’s saliva on another person is both disgusting and reprehensible, at least he didn’t cut into the front of the line to do it. Patience ought to have some reward.

There are all kinds of theories on why Jane Fonda, now a slim and rich 67, is still so thoroughly despised. A friend suggests that women actually despise her because she’s slim, and the working poor despise her because she’s rich, but that doesn’t count in the present circumstances of her perceived treachery. It’s the veterans who hate her most, and although their army is decreasing, it’s still pretty vocal.

I think the real antipathy toward her lies not only in her symbolization as leader of the antiwar movement but also, because we lost the war, as the icon of defeat.

Short of finding Osama bin Laden or attacking North Korea to prove her patriotism, Fonda’s only way out of being the most hated woman in America might be to re-create herself in one of those docudramas that twists history to suit its purpose. Her visit to North Vietnam could be turned into an effort to gain secret information, a role she had been sworn never to reveal until now.

Since cinematic fiction is often responsible for shaping reality, it would transform her image into that of a saint. She was working for the CIA all along. The sex-kitten image would remain, of course, because sex attracts audiences. Paris Hilton could be a young American Jane, and the VFW would end up hailing Fonda as a true heroine. She’d march in the next Veterans Day parade.

Then maybe we can get over the old war and get on to stopping the war we’re in and preventing the wars to come.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be reached at al.martinez@latimes.com.