Reply #58: Ta-daaaaa

[ForrestGump]

Unlike you, I wasn't there (I was only ten when the helicopters were being ditched into the sea in April of 1975, and I was not in or of the USA at that time, anyway), but my thoughts echo yours. I'll watch her in films -- truth be told, though, with a few exceptions I tend to find her a very annoying actress -- but I think that what she did in Vietnam was unforgivable and, if I recall, the apology she eventually gave was somewhat of a non-apology-apology, given way too late. It'd be easy to write it off as her being young and naively idealistic, but I think that'd be a cop-out (I don't recall John Lennon, who wasn't even American, heading over to Vietnam to be a propaganda prop for the North) and it still, in the end, doesn't excuse her actions, and neither does the fact that Vietnam was without doubt the wrong war in the wrong place and that many Vietnamese civilians died directly or indirectly because of US intervention. Being an opportunist, in general, is not worthy of arbitrary condemnation (she wouldn't have had a career if she wasn't imbued with a good streak of opportunist, anyway), but what she did was both stupid and injurious to those of her compatriots who, for whatever reason, were engaged in the conflict over there.