Donald Trump's Mug Shot Won't Come Near Jane Fonda's Bad-Ass One For The Ages

And stop comparing Trump to fucking Rosa Parks.

Twice-impeached, newly indicted Donald Trump is scheduled for arraignment today in New York for his serious business crimes, and many people are eager to see his mug shot — even though Evan already explained this morning there may not be one. This will be sad for many of you. Trump doesn't have the sort of face you want to look at head on, but schadenfreude can override aesthetic considerations.

The Washington Post   joined the discussion Monday with an article titled, "History’s most famous mug shots: Will Trump join this pantheon?" A "pantheon" usually refers to a group of particularly respected, famous, or important people. Trump got busted for especially scuzzy business fraud. He's not Zeus, unless you count the sexual assault accusations. 

The subhead is worse: "From Jane Fonda and O.J. Simpson to Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., mug shots chronicle the arrests of famous people."

OJ Simpson is a damn murderer ( acquitted , I know). He's not Jack Johnson, the Black heavyweight arrested for felonious white lady sex. But if you think that's bad — and you should — the photo illustration is even worse.

Washington Post 

The featured mug shots are Jane Fonda, John Edwards, and Rosa Parks . Edwards is the former Democratic senator from North Carolina, former vice presidential candidate, and former spouse to a (now deceased) woman he cheated on while she had cancer. He'd later insist that his affair with filmmaker Rielle Hunter occurred while his wife was in remission. It's the sort of distinction an asshole makes, one later proven untrue just like his initial "Billie Jean" denials that he didn't father Hunter's daughter. 

Edwards wasn't arrested, however, just for having the morals of a rutting sea elephant. No, Edwards's admittedly fetching mug shot was taken after he was charged with using almost $1 million in funds from his 2008 presidential campaign to help cover up his disgusting, cruel affair.

Jane Fonda is another matter altogether. The actress and activist was arrested at the Cleveland airport in 1970 on bogus drug trafficking charges. She was a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War, as your conservative relatives will tell you after spitting her name and twirling in place three times, and she's claimed that the arresting officer informed her he was acting on direct orders from the Nixon White House. She wasn’t on an ego trip. The FBI and CIA had her under surveillance for months, and the National Security Agency was tapping her phone calls.

The "drugs" the cops found were confirmed months later to be vitamins, and the charges against her were dropped. Fonda was nonetheless handcuffed and spent a night in jail, neither of which will happen to Trump.

Rosa Parks is the civil rights legend who was arrested because she refused to surrender her seat on a public bus to some lazy-ass white man. Including these two women in a discussion of Trump is journalistic malpractice, as he's desperate to paint himself as the victim of political persecution, rather than a low-rent thug.

The Post article examines the different genres of mug shots — drunk celebrity, crooked politician, straight-up murderer, and civil rights hero. They might've considered excluding the last group.

When Fonda was arrested in 2019 during a peaceful protest outside the Capitol for climate change action, the 81-year-old was handcuffed without a whimper from the Republicans who defend January 6 insurrectionists. Fonda was also arrested five times that year while protesting outside the White House. She had previously tried to appeal directly to Trump's useless daughter and son-in-law.

“I actually called Jared, or whatever his name is," she said, "and I told him my idea and he said, ‘Well, Ivanka is the environmentalist in the family.’ Yeah, sure. So she called me and I told her my idea and she laughed and I never heard from her again.”

During the coverage of Fonda's 2019 arrests, Hannah Natanson at the Post  wrote that Fonda's 1970 mug shot "marked the beginning of a hairdo sensation. The black-and-white photo introduced America to bad-girl bangs." However, Fonda's close-cropped, shaggy bangs were a new look, and we've been subjected to Trump's Tribble toupee for decades now.

In her 1970 mug shot, Fonda, who had every reason to be terrified, raised a defiant fist in the air. When asked in a recent interview why she’d done this, she responded in true Fonda fashion, “Why not?”

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[ Washington Post ]

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