Senator Allen’s Webb

JOHN HERRINGTON was driving his car across San Francisco’s Bay Bridge, on his way to an amateur boxing match in 1978, when he first heard of James Webb. The young author was on the radio to promote Fields of Fire, his just-published novel about the Vietnam War. Herrington might not have remembered the broadcast, if it hadn’t been for an exchange in its final moments. The host of the show mentioned that a certain actress was coming to town. There was a long pause. “Jane Fonda can kiss my a**,” said Webb. “I wouldn’t go across the street to watch her slit her wrist.”

Herrington has told this story beforeit appears in The Nightingale’s Song, by Robert Timberg-and he enjoys telling it now, after almost three decades. “Words like that really grab your attention,” he says. Herrington eventually helped Webb secure his first job in the Reagan administration, as an assistant secretary of defense. Now Webb is trying to use this experience to get elected to the Senate-as an anti-war Democrat from Virginia. “If [Reagan] was alive today, I think he’d be a Democrat again,” said Webb in July. Amazingly, this Fonda-hater is now on the verge of upsetting Republican senator

About the Author

John J. Miller

John J. Miller, a former national correspondent for National Review, is the director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College. He is the author of A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America.

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JOHN HERRINGTON was driving his car across San Francisco’s Bay Bridge, on his way to an amateur boxing match in 1978, when he first heard of James Webb. The young author was on the radio to promote Fields of Fire, his just-published novel about the Vietnam War. Herrington might not have remembered the broadcast, if it hadn’t been for an exchange in its final moments. The host of the show mentioned that a certain actress was coming to town. There was a long pause. “Jane Fonda can kiss my a**,” said Webb. “I wouldn’t go across the street to watch her slit her wrist.”

Herrington has told this story beforeit appears in The Nightingale’s Song, by Robert Timberg-and he enjoys telling it now, after almost three decades. “Words like that really grab your attention,” he says. Herrington eventually helped Webb secure his first job in the Reagan administration, as an assistant secretary of defense. Now Webb is trying to use this experience to get elected to the Senate-as an anti-war Democrat from Virginia. “If [Reagan] was alive today, I think he’d be a Democrat again,” said Webb in July. Amazingly, this Fonda-hater is now on the verge of upsetting Republican senator

About the Author

John J. Miller

John J. Miller, a former national correspondent for National Review, is the director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College. He is the author of A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America.