Jane Fonda was on Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday ahead of the historic Women’s Marches around the world, during which of course countless celebrities participated. Maher played devil’s advocate and asked Fonda about the conservative’s retort that celebrities hinder, not help, causes they support. Of course this is their position because the Republicans have apologists but hardly any celebrity backersdespite the fact that the orange despot in power is a reality TV star. Jane shot that concept down quickly and said that celebrities bring attention to important causes. Incidentally she recently brought awareness to the need for people to take their money out of banks which invest in the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Do you think celebrities help at these marches? There’s a whole school of thought, the Trump people [think] you’ll get him re-elected because that makes the regular American [dislike it]
The predator in chief and his fake news, their tactic is to divide and conquer. Whenever a celebrity speaks out like Meryl did at the Golden Globes and gets the reaction from our President elect, which ridiculous. You know that she hit a spot and is pushing his buttons.I have been a celebrity for 50 years. I have been told that I should shut up because I am a celebrity. What celebrities can do is they can bring attention to things that wouldn’t normally get attention.
What do you say to the right wingers who call us sore losers?
We are not sore losers it just so happens that we understand that because of climate change we don’t have time to make mistakes.
[From Real Time via Huffington Post]
Let me bring this up before a couple of trolls show up: yes Jane Fonda made some very obvious mistakes in her activism when she was young. She has apologized for that countless times and I don’t think she should have to continue talking about it 40 years later. She’s right, celebrities have the ability to bring attention to important causes and with that comes great responsibility. She gets it now, and so do so many other celebrities like Meryl Streep. We need more celebrities stating facts and calling out Emperor Baby Fists for what he does and he says because he obviously hates that, seethes over it and gets distracted briefly from his plans to gut all programs which don’t support rich white men. Also, there is no such f-ing thing as “alternative facts,” KellyAnne CONaway. The alternative to facts is lies.
I found a portion of Jane Fonda’s speech in LA. It is freaking incredible. She says, in part, “We have to resist with a two prong strategy. On the national level… we have to systematically block and resist and disrupt every time the predator in chief tries to roll back our democratic rights and freedom. But this is really important, on the state level we have to be on the offense. We have to train and support organizers. We have to identify and groom righteous women to run for office. We have to get into every nook and cranny.”
Here’s Jane at the Women’s March in LA with Helen Reddy and Lily Tomlin. Also Debbie Allen, Lesley Ann Warren, Natalie Portman, Jennifer Grey and James Franco. I love these pics. LOOK AT Jennifer Grey’s shirt!
Why doesn’t the Orange Slug understand that, as taxpayers and citizens, even celebrities have a right to free speech in America? Jane Fonda has been an activist for decades. She knows of what she speaks. All the Womens Marches around America and the world have rattled Trump and, Fonda is correct, now is not the time to back down. This movement must continue!
Trump’s comment was about political strategy and probably motivated by sour grapes but it did not sound to me like he was advocating for the suppression of a celeb’s right to free speech.
And I respectfully disagree with Celebitchy today. I thought it bad political strategy for celebrities to be front and center in the speeches at the rallies this weekend. I’ll still be a Democrat though. To be clear, I support celebrities’ rights to protest and speak up. And I agree that they can be an important strategy in being front and center for bringing attention to certain causes.
I respectfully disagree with you. Our society is celebrity driven ,which is probably why we got stuck with Trump as president. It is important for people to see other celebrities calling Trump out on his sexist, racism, bigotry, etc. Trump’s brand of hate speech cannot be normalized. The best way to do that is by having those with a platform call him out all day, every day and twice on Sundays.
I with Nasty Woman who disagrees with you. Or, I’m with HER!
Celebrities have played a role in politics and protesting since at least the ’60s. Their perceived prominence helps ordinary citizens recognize the potentially harmful causes of dictators and helps bridge the divide between policies that help all vs those that help a few.
Emperor Zero woke up Saturday to complete and utter shock on two levels: first, there were massive protests beginning in Australia and New Zealand and continued throughout the day which steamed his broccoli. Then he saw the star power on display at events in Washington DC, New York, and Los Angeles which completely dwarfed his “star power” on display at his inauguration.
Genghis Con blew several blood vessels that day and erroneously sent Baghdad Sean out to give “alternative facts.” Spicer was so ill-equipped with his pasty skin and bloodshot eyes that he made it worse for Chicken L’Orange.
So no, Minn…I think the celebrities at the marches had the desired affect on that narcissist Orange Julius Caesar. Can’t wait for the next one.
Were celebrities really front and centre? They were barely visible on my news feed (which was focused on interviews with random everyday-people who were marching).
Honestly, if I hadn’t come to Celebitchy, the only marching celebs I’d know about would be: Madonna (“blow up the Whitehouse” made news), ScarJo (awkward moment when her mike cut off) and Emma Watson (article wasn’t about her, just happened to include her photo in a general description of the march). The rest didn’t even rate a mention. Which I thought was rather refreshing – it came off as a grassroots uprising, rather than something overly-organised, contrived and marketed to within an inch of it’s life.
So I guess I agree with MinnFinn’s basic point – it’s better political strategy for celebs to take a low profile for a while: let the grassroots get some air. But I feel like they did manage to step back on this one.
The Boston march featured politicians. And the governor and lieutenant governor are now being called out for not showing support. The lieutenant governor is one of five women holding statewide office in MA and she is the only one of the five who didn’t take the stage.
@Eric just summed up today’s WaPo behind the scenes article in a more concise, hilarious way. Period!
The celebrities bring the cameras. Sad but true. The media are attracted by bright and shiny things. Organizations are delighted to have celebrities do events for that reason. You can have skatillions of powerful speakers who are not celebs and most reporters will probably not show up.
It’s really nice when the celeb turns out to have a brain and the ability to deliver a powerful speech, though. Which happened quite a bit.
It’s not just Trump who is wanting free speech and dissent stifled. Quite a few of his supporters. I’ve seen posts on FB about how movies should be banned until celebrities should just “shut up” and “learn to keep their dumb opinions to themselves”.
Anything of value the predator attempts to degrade. He and his administraion= evil spin doctors. Think about it. Next thing he’ll call the Native American tribes “unAmerican” because he signed a bill just last night to continue the Dakota Access Pipeline. He has investments in this same pipeline- which his children now own supposedly. His republican buddys in the legistalitve branch won’t prosecute him for conflicts of interest that keep him from self-serving policie$.
President Tweeter is claiming he sold his stocks for the pipeline company in June. No documentation, of course. Must have been done on a handshake with bags of rolled pennies. And no explanation as to why he wouldn’t wait until elected, since he could make such sales without any capital gains tax if done to avoid conflict of interest.
What really probably happened: He definitely created two new family trusts in May. Would bet that they were revocable trusts, meaning he has full control over the contents and can sell them any time and of course knows that he owns them. So he probably just shifted the stocks into those trusts to hide them from view. He and his minions are still claiming he can’t have any conflicts of interest because he’s the President.
Meanwhile, he’s in violation of the terms of his lease and the emoluments rules since the instant he took the oath of office, just over the hotel he built at the old post office site.
I’m such a Jane Fonda fangirl! Although I don’t always agree with celebrities I think they are as entitled as anyone else to air their opinions about politics. And frankly I think it’s a more interesting topic than how they maintain their figures or what their favourite lipstick is.
Plus as she (and countless others) pointed out whenever a celebrity calls out Trump it garners such a ridiculous reaction from him.
I don’t think celebrities necessarily influence political opinions. They can bring attention to important causes. A recent example that comes to mind is Shailene Woodley using her fame to raise awareness about the Dakota Pipeline.
He wants to degrade that attention to any cause that doesn’t $erve his interest$.
I love Jane. Such a fantastic woman.
Trump’s response to the Women’s March was to sign the Global Gag order surrounded by men. They either don’t get it or they don’t want to get it.
We will never see 7 women crowding round to sign legislation about what men can or can’t do with their bodies.
Imagine HRC and 6 women members of her cabinet signing an order to make foreign aid contingent on whether men are or aren’t circumcised or do or do not masturbate.
Unsafe abortions in the developing world comprise 13% of maternal deaths globally. FFS.
Also, last time the gag rule was in place, it backfired and led to more abortions.
Most of the women’s health organisations refused to go abstinence-only, lost American funding and shut down some of their clinics. So all the other family planning services were also lost. No US-funded abortions PLUS no US-funded contraceptive advice = more abortions than ever, they’re just funded by other people/places.
I’m pro-choice, but even people who are pro-life should be against this move. If they legitimately wanted to decrease the number of abortions, the US government would have to take the funding they’ve just pulled from existing NGOs and give it to groups who are anti-abortion but pro-contraceptive. That would rule out most church groups who preach abstinence-only (that simply doesn’t work). How many organisations are left? Not many.
It’s not a simple problem. If you want to reduce abortion, it takes more effort than simply removing funding.
Also more women dead from ectopics and other complications.
Exactly to you both.
Not just morally wrong but also self-defeating.
And we aren’t talking thousands of deaths: we are talking millions of deaths.
The problem is that so many people don’t know/care what the Global Gag Order even is. Some of the responses I heard were “well, why should we be paying for women in other countries to have abortions??”
*facepalm*
On FB, I have a Trumpster friend who posted a link to a petition to keep celebrities out of politics. I commented below: “Where is the petition to keep celebrities out of the White House? That’s the one I want to sign.”
They don’t want to get it. They don’t see women’s rights as important.
I want to get into politics JUST to introduce a bill banning insurance coverage for Viagra and cialis. If we can’t get coverage for birth control (because all women should just, you know, abstain from having sex – even though BC has actual medical uses), then a pill that is strictly for sex should not be covered, either. I think if the issues are framed the right way, they may slowly begin to get it.
More than not caring about women’s rights, they do not care about women’s lives.
I can’t get over how politically inept his team are. If a traditional conservative had won and decided to sign the same legislation, they’d have had at least one token female in that shot. His team isn’t even paying lip-service to the normal image-management rules.
If you’re going to be an evil authoritarian dictator, you should at least be a competent one. This is just sad. Bigly sad! Trump needs some PR tips from Putin. (But please no shirtless photos!)
I get the impression that (although they are probably also inept) they just don’t care, they don’t see any advantage in pretending to be other than they are. They were elected by people whose racism and misogyny are stronger than their intelligence and things like this are fine with them. Anything that might actually bother their supporters is explained away as fake news
But he’s gotten this far being horrible; I don’t see why he’d start worrying about optics now.
They think they are above the law, above the Constitution. They won’t even pretend to play by the rules.
I bet these are the same people who baulk at Shariah Law but hey there’s no big problem if the ‘conservative’ Christians lobby for this and that. So much for the separation between religion and state.
You betcha. These were the same people who said Hillary couldn’t be trusted because accepted money from entities in Saudi Arabia and they treated women badly. I guess it’s okay as long as it’s the Christians mistreating women.
Yep that was his retaliation, which is sick because this will lead to more abortions, more deaths an increase in HIV/AIDS, tons of childhood diseases and deaths the list goes on and on he basically signed a global health crisis.
Oh and by the way this gag order makes the one GWB signed look like child’s play we haven’t had one this restrictive since Regaen. The man truly wants to go back to the 80s when he was valid.
@K, not gobal, only the US will face a health crisis, the USA is NOT the World!
It is Horrible that he signed it, and surprise, he was surrounded with white old Men, one of it had a nasty grin on it’s Face, one of the worst of this Group…
I think you misunderstand the law we’re talking about Gwen. The Global Gag Act stops US funding going to any foreign agency that mentions abortions. (It’s got nothing to do with abortions within the US, Trump will attack those later.)
For example, when the recent Ebola crisis took out a large chunk of the local doctors and nurses in affected countries, their (already poor) health services collapsed. USAID supported over 500 health facilities in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, training literally thousands of local workers in infection control protocol. With the gag order in place, USAID wouldn’t have been able to help any facility unless it promised that it would not perform abortions (no exceptions – even if the mother’s life is threatened) or even refer patients to other facilities that perform abortions. Most of the health facilities would not have agreed to such strict terms. So there would’ve been no US-funded infection training. So the outbreak would have lasted longer and spread wider.
It’s all about unintended consequences.
“We have to get into every nook and cranny.” AMEN. It was so gratifying to read about this very thing happening on a local level here in Chicago — a suburban school board member resigned after a vigilant parent saw his twitter feed filled with misogynistic rants about the marches on Sat — and lots more hateful stuff going back years. By all accounts he resigned so he wouldn’t have to face what promised to be a PACKED school board meeting calling for him to step down.
It seemed people were shocked that someone seemingly “respectable” — frighteningly, he’s apparently a child psychologist! — could be so hateful. Hopefully it was a huge wake up call to everyone who thinks their votes on a local level don’t matter.
Oh, and in his letter of “apology,” he said his tweets were no more vulgar than many of the signs at the march…but he’s sorry. Heavy sigh.
Out of the hundreds and hundreds of signs I saw, I can only think of two that could have been considered vulgar. In fact my BF and I both remarked about how striking that was: almost every single sign was positive or just plain factual. It was actually really heart-warming in that the march was about our rights being impeded and the unity that is required to fight against this administration. It was NOT a march to trash Trump, even though it easily could have become that.
So glad that dude was forced to resign. Completely unprofessional.
I agree about the signs. So many poignant messages, I could look at the images of them all day. The guy who claimed they were vulgar was really reaching, clearly.
And a funny update — according to this morning’s news, someone in the school board meeting apparently stood up and ranted that he was offended that so many people kept saying “vagina” (the tweet the school board member said something about women being “vagina screechers”) and how was he going to explain to his kids that “vagina” was being repeatedly said at a school board meeting?
And the right has the nerve to call the left “snowflakes?”
Esmom – If they’re afraid to explain what a “vagina” is to their children, they have bigger issues than a march. Special snowflakes, indeed.
@Kitten, I think I know one of the vulgar ones that appeared near the stage at the Boston march. Otherwise, most were really good.
Celebrity in chief p*ssygrabbing Trump was able to speak out so why not her. I feel like pulling my hair out sometimes at the hypocrisy, audacity and corruption of Trump and his people. His spokesperson recently whined the press was “demoralizing”. Have any of those people heard what their leader and chief insulter said about entire groups of people and individuals. How he horribly he puts down America every single chance he gets because only he can make it “great” again. Do they even comprehend a little bit the fear Trump’s innocent targets feel? Deporable is the appropriate word for the whole lot of them.
The cognitive dissonance is outstanding. But go to Breitbart – if you dare (I like to see what the enemy is thinking) – and you will see what they have bought his “the media is against me” bull hook, line and sinker. Everything is fake news, except Trump’s alternative facts.
It is truly frightening now that this mentality has gone mainstream.
And I flipped out on my 15 year old son who was laughing at an unflattering meme about the women’s march…not that he’s confusing real news from fake news but man social media as a main channel for info sure isn’t helping things.
I had someone screaming about Fake News and MSM at me yesterday while citing The Washington Times as her news source. Because when you want real information about our government, consult a cult.
@Roby, NastyWoman and all-
Have you guys noticed a shift in the attitude of the Left since the women’s march?
I recently saw a link of Sean Spicer’s claim that we were “demoralizing” to Trump and the comments below surprised me. Lots of liberals who were really fired up and angry basically saying “fuck off”. I tend to think that the marches energized and emboldened a lot of liberals because I really haven’t seen so much unapologetic, no-holds-barred anger since Trump got elected.
I gotta say: I like it!
The world is really messed up now that some want to brand ALL news “fake news,” whether it comes from The Washington Post or “bob’s political blog.” As a former journalism major, I’m sick. I keep thinking of one of my first professors, who was the pinnacle of integrity and (actual) truth, rolling in his grave.
@ Esmom, but you know that the USA is NOT the World, right?
The US is at the Moment and at least the next 4 Years the most messed up place….the Drumpf will destroy so much, the people who will most suffer, are the US Americans, sad but true.
Some of you choosed that orange thing, and all (not the rich of course) will pay for it, it’s horrible to look at the Trainwreck Drumpf the Destroyer…
Gwen, I do know the USA is not the world, thank you. While I agree that Americans will bear more than the lion’s share of the pain his administration plans to inflict, I don’t agree that he’s not a global problem.
I once made the mistake of going on Breitbart, reading the articles and posters’ comments. Simply vile.
I go to thicken my hide. This is what a huge segment of the population is actually thinking.
Is it worse than DM (the Fail)? I feel like I am in a terrible, alternate universe there.
There’s not much else I can add, other than it bugs me when The Elder Franco does things that make me like him when he’s supposed to annoy me.
+1000
Her comment on Real Time about climate change was perfect. We don’t have time for this science denying, “alternative facts” spewing, know-nothing administration! We can’t waste a moment, but will likely waste at least four years.
An article in Chemical and Engineering News (a magazine that goes out to chemists and chemical engineers in the US as part of their dues in the American Chemical Society) right after the election said that enough US companies are convinced of the climate change data and its urgency that the momentum for US participation in climate change work will still be there despite Trump. It may not be government level, but it will still happen. A big problem will be lack of government funding for research projects, but maybe we can replace that with non-government sources or grants from other countries.
I’ve never agreed with Jane Fonda on much of anything, though I do like her. And this is the wonderful thing about America – free speech. No one should be told to shut up.
I think her work in Georgia has been impressive and something most people would agree with and applaud.
https://youthtoday.org/2015/06/successful-outreach-to-rural-communities-provides-a-national-model-for-teen-pregnancy-prevention/
On this subject, there is now a Jane Fonda Center at Emory University.
The Jane Fonda Center’s mission is to advance scientific knowledge about adolescence with an emphasis on adolescent reproductive health. We also seek to disseminate information and strategies for risk reduction and healthy transitions to adulthood.
I’ve always agreed with Jane, well back in her anti Vietnam war days, not sure about the leotards. She did not make mistakes as celebitchy says, she simply had an opinion that was unpopular at the time and later shown by history to be vindicated. Hail, and hopefully not vale, free speech.
Go, Jane.
I forgot what I was going to post, but it was fiercely not-my-president. I’m 37, I’m exhausted, just trying to work, earn health care and credit for my student loans. And I’m divorced, with a child who passed away and I can’t get a fucking therapy appointment,
I’m sorry you’re having a rough time Veronica. If you need to talk to someone but can’t get an appointment, have you thought about calling a hotline? You don’t actually have to be in a full-blown crisis to call Lifeline etc, they actually deal with a range of issues.
Fuck that, scream louder for that appointment
I’m very sorry for you, Veronica.
I gotta know: did she call Trump a “sexist,egotistical,lying,hypocritical,bigot”???????? That would have been rad.
22 older white men in Trumps cabinet, the most since the Regan years. Sad fact: in the entire history of the US there have only been 50 women Senators, she is so right that mentor programs are need to groom women for a place in politics and on governing bodies.
The numbers of women in Congress are so much better than when I was young, though. I was struck by that when watching some of the hearings for President Tweeter’s nominations. I said to myself, “where did all these female Senators come from?!?”. They seemed to be all over the place during the hearings, while in the olden days before cable tv and cell phones and personal computers – they were a rare event even in the House, much less the Senate.
But they are old… knock, knock, knockin’ on Satan’s door. As for the orange crud, he’s fat as a pig so keep feeding him lots of artery-clogging food. Plus he can’t bear being mocked; I’m sure it will lead to a heart attack.