evidence: "To elevate Hanoi Jane over the Vietnamese Community, Americans who sacrificed their lives, and the loved ones they lost to communism, is deeply offensive to the freedom-loving Vietnamese Americans who bear such tragic and painful memories of the Vietnam War," Steel said in a statement, using a pejorative nickname for Fonda that circulated following her protest of the war. [...] Although the Academy Award-winning actress has been lauded for her climate work, Fonda was sharply criticized after she went to Hanoi during the Vietnam War to oppose U.S. involvement in the conflict. During a visit in 1972, she was photographed wearing a helmet and sitting in the gunner’s seat of a North Vietnamese antiaircraft gun. Fonda told Barbara Walters during an interview in 1988 that sitting on the gun was "a thoughtless and careless thing to have done." She apologized to Vietnam War veterans and their families at the time.