I suppose that my first memory of the First Lady of the United States was Jackie Kennedy. I was in 1st grade, watching my parents’ black and white television, as the funeral procession of President Kennedy passed by on the screen.  She seemed to me to be the epitome of grace and class as she watched her husbands casket passed by. As I grew older, I watched the succeeding First Ladies all fulfill their duties with a sense of presence and decorum.

And, then came Mooch.

John Nolte reports on Breitbart.com that

In the January 27 issue of People Magazine, First Lady Michelle Obama cites Jane Fonda as a role model. “[And] there’s Jane Fonda, a beautiful, engaged, politically savvy, sharp woman,” Michelle Obama responded after being asked by People who she would someday want to look and live like.

PEOPLE: And there are other role models you look at and think, “When I’m 70 or 80, I want to look and live like her’?

MRS. OBAMA: Oh, yes. Every event I go to, every rope line, women are looking better with every passing year. I run into women all the time who will just happen to mention, “Oh, I’m going to be 60,” and it’s like, “You’re kidding me!” I just went to see Cicely Tyson on Broadway. She is in her 80s and did a two-hour play with stamina and passion. I told her, “I want to be you when I grow up!” [And] there’s Jane Fonda, a beautiful, engaged, politically savvy, sharp woman.

For the last fifty years, Fonda has been one of the most divisive political and cultural figures in America. Fonda earned the nickname “Hanoi Jane” after photos were released of the actress laughing it up with our enemies in North Vietnam while sitting on an anti-aircraft gun used to shoot down American flyers.

While the war was still raging, Fonda attacked the American government and our troops in propaganda radio broadcasts for the North Vietnamese.

Recently, as the Iraq War waged, Fonda resumed her anti-war activities.

Among America’s veterans, “Hanoi Jane” remains one of the most reviled figures in American history. Still, America’s First Lady considers Fonda a role model and sees her as “politically savvy.”

When you are reminded that the First Lady and the President spent 20 years in Reverend Wright’s church, Michelle Obama’s choice of Fonda as a role model isn’t likely to surprise anyone.

He’s right. The preceding story should come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention.

There is a reason that us “older Americans” call Jane Fonda “Hanoi Jane”…

In July-August 1972 Fonda made her infamous trip to North Vietnam. By this time, over 50,000 Americans had been killed in the war. While there, she posed for pictures on an anti-aircraft gun that had been used to shoot down American planes, and she volunteered to do a radio broadcast from Hanoi. She made approximately eight radio addresses, during which she told American pilots in the area:

“Use of these bombs or condoning the use of these bombs makes one a war criminal … Examine the reasons given to justify the murder you are being paid to commit … I don’t know what your officers tell you … but [your] weapons are illegal and that’s not just rhetoric … The men who are ordering you to use these weapons are war criminals according to international law, and in the past, in Germany and Japan, men who committed these kinds of crimes were tried and executed.”

Fonda also quoted Ho Chi Minh during some of these broadcasts. She referred to President Richard Nixon as a “new-type Hitler,” and advised South Vietnamese soldiers to desert: “You are being used as cannon fodder for U.S. imperialism.”

These radio addresses were aired repeatedly by the North Vietnamese Communists, for whom propaganda was a key tool of psychological warfare; they used the broacasts not only to hearten their own citizens, but also to undermine the American public’s will to go forward with the war, and to crush the morale of U.S. and allied forces.

In an effort to explain why she made her broadcasts over Radio Hanoi, Fonda writes in her autobiography that she had mainly wanted to educate U.S. pilots about the great harm their bombing campaigns were inflicting on innocent people. But in fact, most of what Fonda said was of a highly political nature. Many of the statements had been scripted for her by the North Vietnamese. 

Among her statements were the following (as cataloged by Henry Mark Holzer):

“I want to publicly accuse Nixon here of being a new-type Hitler whose crimes are being unveiled.”

“The Vietnamese people will win.”

“Nixon is continuing to risk your [American pilots’] lives and the lives of the American prisoners of war . . . in a last desperate gamble to keep his office come November. How does it feel to be used as pawns? You may be shot down, you may perhaps even be killed, but for what, and for whom?”

“[President Nixon] defiles our flag and all that it stands for in the eyes of the entire world.”

“Perhaps the soldiers . . . who have suffered the most . . . [are] the black soldiers, the brown soldiers, and the red and Asian soldiers.”

“Should we be fighting on the side of the people who are, who are murdering innocent people, should we be trying to defend a government in Saigon which is putting in jail tens of thousands of people into the tiger cages, beating them, torturing them . . . . And I don’t think . . . that we should be risking our lives or fighting to defend that kind of government.”

“We . . . have a common enemy—U. S. imperialism.”

It looks like Mooch has found a kindred spirit.

Jake Tapper of ABC News reported the following on February 18, 2008:

Speaking in Milwaukee, Wisconsin today, would-be First Lady Michelle Obama said, “for the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback.”

Then in Madison, she said, “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country, and not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change.”

Some conservatives out there seem to find Mrs. Obama’s quote offensive, wondering why a 44 year old woman never felt proud before today.

Asked for a response to the remark, Obama campaign spox Bill Burton said, “Of course Michelle is proud of her country, which is why she and Barack talk constantly about how their story wouldn’t be possible in any other nation on Earth. What she meant is that she’s really proud at this moment because for the first time in a long time, thousands of Americans who’ve never participated in politics before are coming out in record numbers to build a grassroots movement for change.”

Evidently, her lack of pride in America did not end when she and Scooter “moved on up” to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The Washington Times reported on September 13, 2011, that

The internet was buzzing this week with video of First Lady Michelle Obama apparently showing extreme disrespect to the American flag at a ceremony in honor of the victims of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. As police and firefighters fold the flag to the sound of marching bagpipers, a skeptical looking Mrs. Obama leans to her husband and appears to say, “all this just for a flag.” She then purses her lips and shakes her head slightly as Mr. Obama nods.

Just as President Barack Hussein Obama is showing contempt for our system of checks and balances by planning to lighten restrictions now held against Iran, by going around Congress, so has Michelle held and continues to hold, contempt for our nation and our American Values. What Michelle Obama and her husband have shown us in the last 5 years, is that this is what happens when you place a Far Left Radical and his equally-Far Left wife in the most powerful position in the United States Government.

Neither one of them respect our country…much less the citizens who put them there.

And, Lord help you if you hold a viewpoint which is opposite from theirs.

I guess that I am getting old, but I miss the days when we had an American President and a classy First Lady in the White House, who actually loved our country.

Until He Comes,

KJ