It's time to take John Wayne's name off the Orange County airport
https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-hiltzik-john-wayne-oc-airport-20190221-story.htmlIt’s time to take John Wayne’s name off the Orange County airport
By Michael Hiltzik
Feb 21, 2019 | 1:05 PM
A statue of John Wayne stands at the baggage level of the airport bearing his name. Is it time to put him out to pasture? (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)
I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility.
John Wayne, 1971
Most people familiar with the life story of John Wayne are aware that the late movie star was a dyed-in-the-wool right-winger — after all, he was still making a movie glorifying America’s conduct of the Vietnam War (“The Green Berets,” 1968) well after the country had begun to get sick of the conflict.
But the resurrection of a 1971 interview Wayne gave to Playboy magazine has underscored the sheer crudeness of the actor’s feelings about gay people, black people, Native Americans, young people and liberals.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s impossible or immoral to enjoy Westerns and war movies starring John Wayne; that’s a personal choice. But it certainly undermines any justification for his name and image to adorn a civic facility.
We’re talking about Orange County’s John Wayne Airport. It’s long past the time that Wayne’s name should come down.
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the hero worship of John Wayne.
Like Ronnie Raygun, he was always and ever nothing but an armchair and cinematic warrior, unlike other Hollywood celebrities like Henry Fonda, who actually served in the US Navy during WWII. Unlike other celebrities, Fonda insisted on going through basic training like any other enlistee. He was in my dad's basic training group in 1942. After basic training, he served as an officer, however. I do not believe that Fonda EVER payed a role where war was glorified. https://www.imdb.com/list/ls003048730/
Fonda's children, Jane and Peter, did not come by their anti-war views in a vacuum.
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As kids, we used to roll our eyes at Wayne's earliest westerns. We thought he sounded and acted more like a smarmy "dude." And yes, we were using the term pejoratively, I am sorry to say. We didn't have access to much US TV fare in the 50s and when the feature was a John Wayne western, we all used to groan.
I lived and worked outside the US during most of the 60s. When I returned, I discovered that Wayne had had a media do-over. He was then "The Duke," and the epitome of "macho."
It seems that he was also an entrenched racist.
Take him down! 
