The Stuff Heroes Are Made Of (Chewing Tobacco and a Fast Pair of Sneakers)

Michael A. Smith, a reported Vietnam vet, waited in line for 90 minutes at a Jane Fonda book signing so he could spit a mouth full of chewing tobacco at her.

And then? He RAN away.

Hey, I'm not a huge Fonda fan. Never was. As a child watching the Vietnam thing, I thought she went too far (Jane has a history of going too far in a host of different directions).

But what kind of chickenshit coward spits on this woman - nearly 40 years after the fact - and then runs his sorry ass away as fast as he can? (I mean, besides a Bush fan?) If he wants her to take responsibility for what she did (and I understand she does in this book), he might want to start with having some personal responsibility of his own. Yes, he served. Congratulations and thanks. (If I were Ann Coulter, I'd just sneer at Smith and remind everyone not every Vietnam soldier was there because he wanted to be - we had a little thing called the draft then - and she'd imply that makes Vietnam's heroes less heroid; Ann's a sweetheart that way.)

But no "hero" cuts and runs if he's supposedly making a statement about something about which he feels passionate. So I don't think too much of Mr. Smith.

Fonda, however, is a bit classier in this regard. She chose not to file charges. I'm not sure I would have been as gracious.

On a personal note, I think some of the vets might be better served by moving their anger off Fonda, who was a silly sidenote to the war at best, and onto the politicians who made them fight and die for a very questionable pursuit. And with it, perhaps question the many similarities between yesterday's Vietnam and today's Iraq. But Ann Coulter would just tell you to "get over it" if you were talking about George Bush; I'm sure Ann holds Fonda to a different standard.

But since I've brought the Cruella d'Coulter into this, let me add one more - and highly extraneous - thing: Fonda made grievous mistakes because she probably thought she had some enlightenment that the rest of the poor schlepps back home didn't "get"; she administered some really poorly chosen forms of shock therapy and didn't do a damned thing to advance the cause of healthy questioning and skepticism. As a child, lacking the understanding of the whole situation, I didn't like what she did. As an adult, I still don't like it much. I don't expect some vets would easily forgive her. There was a desperate arrogance to Fonda then.

But compare Fonda then with Ann Coulter now, and Fonda comes off as a Girl Scout (albeit a Girl Scout dressed by Roger Vadim). Ann has said and written horribly hateful things against some Vietnam (and other) vets, questioning their injuries, their patriotism, their service and sacrifice. What Coulter does every day and every way to me is far worse than what Fonda did back then. Ann LOVES to see your wife and husband, your son and daughter, go off to war because you're poor and you don't mean anything and neither do your loved ones. Fonda, I suspect, wanted the war to end so we'd stop having lives on either side ended with such callous abandon and based on outright lies. By comparison, Coulter speaks nothing but outright lies, as loudly, vituperously and as "seriously sex kittenishly dressed" as Ms. Morals can push it. One's a sin of showboating celebrity while the other is something close to a text book definition of crashness and evil.

[Ed. note: Damn you! I haven't eaten all day. I was just about to do so when you just had to bring up the Wicked Witch of the Wrongly Rabid. I can't eat now.]

[Author's Note: It's called the Coulter Diet (yes, I coined it) which, combined with 8 gallons of Koolaid a day, is part of a smart weight loss plan). Just a sentence of Coulter a day helps you shed unwanted pounds, including cellulite, brain cells AND your immortal soul.]