But He Didn't Use Clip Art, So It Doesn't Count as Eliminationist Rhetoric

Did Peter Fonda really say what the London Telegraph says he said?

Lars von Trier, who was banned from Cannes for praising Hitler, was not the only one making unsavoury comments at the film festival.

Peter Fonda, the star of Easy Rider, suggested to Mandrake that he was encouraging his grandchildren to shoot President Barack Obama.

“I’m training my grandchildren to use long-range rifles,” said the actor, 71. “For what purpose? Well, I’m not going to say the words ‘Barack Obama’, but …”

He added, enigmatically: “It’s more of a thought process than an actuality, but we are heading for a major conflict between the haves and the have nots. I came here many years ago with a biker movie and we stopped a war. Now, it’s about starting the world.

“There’s no room any more for a cissy [sic] and, like I said, don’t forget that I’ve got grandsons who I’ve trained with long-distance rifles. We have to run like mofos to change this world.”

Kathy Shaidle doesn’t let Fonda off the hook for his Vietnam remarks. Fortunately though for Fonda’s career, he’s grandfathered in with the clip art-obsessed left, so likely his career won’t suffer from the implied death threats the Telegraph quotes him as saying. That his face seems to slowly be resembling the 90s-era Jack Nicholson a little bit also won’t hurt Fonda’s crazy elder statesman rep with nostalgia-obsessed boomers.

But Fonda’s eliminationist rhetoric is a reminder that the paranoid left is alive and well.