When it comes to political frustrations, we’re often told to censor ourselves for the sake of “respectability.” And I know the intentions there are good, in the sense that, in an ideal world, people would equally respect one another and listen with the same level of engagement.
HOWEVER, we don’t live in an ideal world. We live in a pretty damn unfair world, and therefore it’s only natural to get frustrated. There’s a longstanding idiom that tells us “a hit dog will holler.” In this case, activist Jane Fonda has had enough of all the dog-kicking, and she finally had to holler:
In this video from her recent appearance on The View, Fonda adamantly declares that we’re “not going back” to the way things once were, specifically regarding a woman’s right to her own bodily autonomy. As more and more members of the GOP attempt to double down on their anti-abortion stances, Fonda is making it clear that we will fight tooth and nail if need be.
In a highly frustrating attempt to derail the conversation, one co-host attempts to make this all about how Jane is an activist and will eventually win a Nobel Prize for her work, but Jane keeps her foot down. She makes it clear that she isn’t talking bullshit: She truly means what she says, and you can tell just how much she wants those co-hosts to quit the BS and be equally as earnest.
To that, one commentator tries to deescalate what’s essentially a non-situation—gotta placate the moderate viewers, I guess?—by asking the most frustrating question one can ask the politically frustrated: “What are you even gonna do? Protest the issue away overnight?”
And Jane, unfazed, claps back, “Well, we could do murder.”
HA! This is why we love Jane Fonda. The media sees an actress and therefore tries to belittle her beliefs through her prior acting career, but ultimately, she’s just as fed up with the pains of injustice as we are (and has been for decades) and she’s got the balls to be candid about it.
Joy Behar and her fellow co-hosts attempted to explain away that she was kidding, because she knew that the wrong types of outlets (the outrage clowns and so on) would take this statement and run away with it. And hey, she does have a point, and a little bit of damage control is understandable. But I just love the withering gaze Fonda makes at the end, looking around the room with a probably playful, yet ultimately serious look of, Are you f****** kidding me?
Look, close-minded people are gonna get angry no matter what you do, so you may as well make it clear that the pains inflicted on marginalized people in this country might just make a bitch contemplate murder, however jokingly. Being strictly polite and agreeable will only get you so far—in fact, it probably won’t get you anything other than the shallow approval of a person who doesn’t even think of you as a person. And at the end of the day, if you’re gonna yak and yak about American “free speech” all day, you’d be a real little pissbaby not to let other people vent their frustrations, too.
Happy Ides of March, Jane Fonda. Get your freak on.
(featured image: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)
