About Jane Fonda
I was going to write about bougie sweaters this week. But then ICE murdered yet another person in Minneapolis and, well, much as I like to treat this newsletter as reality-adjacent at best, it's hard to commit sustained thought to knitwear right now. So instead I'm going to write about Jane Fonda.
I interviewed Jane Fonda several years ago for a profile of Saru Jayaraman, a renowned restaurant worker advocate. Fonda was working with Jayaraman on the One Fair Wage campaign. I didn't expect her to respond to an interview request, but she did, and thrilled as I was, I was mostly just terrified. I'd interviewed a lot of people who could accurately be termed celebrities, but this was Jane Fucking Fonda, actual, incontrovertible icon. I spent the days and hours leading to the interview in a state of mounting gastric distress. And then we spoke and it was fine, I asked my questions and she answered them efficiently and articulately. When I hung up, I feared no one. And since then, whenever I have been nervous about an interview or almost anything else, I whisper, "Jane Fonda," and I feel okay.
I was reminded of this earlier today when I came across a clip of Fonda's appearance on The Late Show last week. Wearing a shirt bedazzled with "resist," she spoke about her effort to relaunch the Committee for the First Amendment. First formed during the McCarthy era, it's a collective of artists and cultural leaders fighting to defend free speech. "Authoritarianism has made its way into every single nook and cranny of our government," she said. "Enough is enough. We have to get organized ... we're the majority. You know, tyrants are never as strong as we think they are, and people are way stronger than we think they are. Our power as people can make a difference. "
In general, I do not experience hope when celebrities talk about politics, or community, or "feeling philosophical." And what Fonda was saying wasn't exactly a newsflash, or something that a thousand community organizers haven't said before. But the thing about Fonda is that she's consistent: she's been an activist for as long as she's been an actor, sometimes to the detriment of her career. She's a woman who has lived many lives, and while all of them have been immensely privileged, she has been very public about her mistakes and her struggles. She has survived both Ted Turner and Stanley & Iris.
So while I'm not going to say that her Colbert interview gave me hope, seeing an 88-year-old woman who's still mad and focused as hell and doing something about it* was, at the very least, inspiring. I will take all the inspiration I can get right now. And when all else fails I'll whisper "Jane Fonda" to myself, because, much like its namesake, it's an invocation that has proven itself consistent in its ability to ward off the darkness.
