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<DIV>The close of a pretty good piece about Bob Hope by Francis Davis, in
this week's Nation:</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>"But by 1990, even Robert McNamara was claiming to have been a closet
peacenik. In the 1960s, when Hope wasn't on stage making sour fun of hippies and
draft-card burners, he was giving interviews in which he mouthed the domino
principle: 'If the Commies ever thought we weren't going to protect the
Vietnamese, there would be Vietnams everywhere,' he said in 1965. He has more in
common with Jane Fonda than either might realize--they both were casualties of
Vietnam. She's always going to be 'Hanoi Jane' to right-wing talk-show hosts,
and the left is never going to forgive him for mistaking Vietnam for Iwo Jima. I
say it's time we granted Hope amnesty, not because we owe it to him but because
we owe it to ourselves. He never made a movie as good as <I>Klute</I> or <I>They
Shoot Horses, Don't They?</I>, but at least he never made one as sappy as <I>On
Golden Pond</I> or as heavy-handed as <I>Coming Home</I>."</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><<A
href="http://thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030630&s=davis">http://thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030630&s=davis</A>></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I'm not as big a fan of Hope's as Davis is, but is an "amnesty" really
necessary? Does anyone go around cursing Hope for Vietnam? I don't think that's
his legacy (he was also a Reagan supporter -- does that sully his prime comedy
years?). As for Fonda, that publicity stunt in Vietnam did cost her to a degree,
but as I try to remind her rightwing critics, she and former-husband Tom Hayden
also supported Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. They went to the front and
watched the IDF blitz Beirut. So, I would think that might cancel out the
anti-aircraft pose amid N. Vietnamese regulars, and earn her a new (and better
title) "Beirut Jane." And despite that wretched stance, I still liked "Coming
Home," which, while not one of Hal Ashby's better films (see "Harold &
Maude," "The Last Detail" and "Being There"), remains a decent antiwar flick,
and a nice, restrained performance by Jon Voight, who finally breaks down at the
end.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>DP</DIV></BODY></HTML>