"There are some who are stuck back there."

So said Jane Fonda on Bill Maher's HBO show last week, referring to the Vietnam veterans who are still angry at her for her activities in North Vietnam during the war. When I pause the show to write down her quote, the freeze frame of her face is maddeningly prissy and smug. Maher has just said that since a veteran spat on her at a reading, she can say that's "penance enough." Fonda says "hundreds" of Vietnam vets have come to her readings in the last few weeks "and they've been fabulous... They have forgiven me. So there are some who are stuck back there. But most are not." Then Maher has this:

Yeah, it really is on them at this point, isn't it? If somebody can't get over something in 35 years.

Somebody? Something? Maher didn't go to Vietnam. Who is he to say get over it? Sure, there are "things" that if you're still stewing about them 35 years later, you've got a problem, but if you haven't gone to war, have the decency to refrain from telling people who have that they need to get over it.

Who is Fonda to tsk at people who are "stuck back there"? She does a big shrug and says, "Well, you know the problem is, we've never really come to terms with the war," and proceeds to lecture us on a whole string of political topics and to tout her version of Christianity that isn't "angry" and hostile like the religion of those who oppose abortion and gay marriage. The interview ends with her describing how she designed the entryway to her loft in the shape of a vagina to protest against all the doorways and hallways that are squared-off and masculine and to commemorate her performance in "The Vagina Monologues."