Just when THE SCRAPBOOK vows never again to bait Jane Fonda, she has to go and give another speech. At the National Press Club last week, she denounced "abstinence-only" programs (efforts to encourage teenagers to refrain altogether from sex). Asked why conservative Christians disagree with her, she said, "They don't care about children that don't look like them. They don't care about children that are not white, middle-class Christians. As far as they're concerned, others can be eliminated." Eliminated? Last time we looked, it was conservative Christians, not Fonda, picketing the nation's abortion clinics.
Now, pointing out that Jane Fonda is a noxious dimbulb is like pointing out that Albany is the capital of New York. Still, Fonda is taken semi-seriously in public life. The other month she decried child "starvation" in northern Georgia before the United Nations. And she meant the American state where hubby Ted Turner's CNN is headquartered, not the former Soviet republic.
Last week's performance, though, was outstanding in its vileness. Conservative Christians have long been in the forefront of, for example, Third World charity. Why does Fonda think -- just to cite one example -- the late Mother Teresa went to Calcutta? To work on her tan? The claim that Christians seek to "eliminate" dark-skinned children verges on what, in other circles, is known as blood libel.
For those who are tracking the moral climate in the nation's capital, the National Press Club that welcomed Fonda's hate speech is indeed the very same club that worked itself into a hissy fit over the bonafides of Internet gossip Matt Drudge only a couple of weeks before.