American First Lady Michelle Obama says Jane Fonda is one of her role models, and that she admires her political savviness.
During an interview with People Magazine, Obama listed “Hanoi Jane,” as one of the people she would like to look and live like when she’s 70 or 80 years old.
“There’s Jane Fonda, a beautiful, engaged, politically savvy, sharp woman,” Obama said.
The comment is likely to enrage Vietnam War veterans who still remember how Fonda, now 76, went to North Vietnam in 1972 and was photographed sitting on an anti-aircraft battery. Fonda denounced U.S. military leaders as “war criminals” and later called tortured American POWs “hypocrites and liars,” telling them to “get a life.”
Obama also listed Cicely Tyson as another role model, during the interview to mark her 50th birthday.
“I just went to see Cicely Tyson on Broadway. She is in her 80s [just turned 80 in December] and did a two-hour play with stamina and passion. I told her ‘I want to be you when I grow up!'”
Obama’s comments are already receiving criticism. Writing on Breitbart, David Webb said, “Michelle Obama often comes across to me as an angry black woman who had all the advantages such as going to Princeton University after coming from basically nothing. Yet instead of maximizing her advantages in life she seems to wear them like a burden and projects the burden onto others.”
“Only a die-hard liberal thinks Jane Fonda is anything less than a traitorous scumbag,” said a post at the conservative blog Weasel Zippers.
“Oh gee, a communist being a ‘big fan’ of another communist, who’d have thunk it?” said one reader at Newsbusters. Another said, “These are the type of people who now rate tribute in our great Republic? This story is sad on so many levels.”
