Exclusive: Fonda's CNN/God/government anti-drug deal

Salon's six-month-long investigation into the religious conversion of Jane Fonda reveals it to be part of a CNN/government advertising swap.

By Gary Kamiya

Jan 14, 2000 | Speculation in Hollywood and media circles mounted today that Jane Fonda's miraculous and unexpected conversion to Christianity was part of a multi-trillion-dollar ad buy engineered by her estranged husband, CNN founder and Time Warner honcho Ted Turner.

Turner recently sold $200 trillion in heavily discounted "Christian-message" advertising space to a coalition of religious groups. With ad rates soaring thanks to an influx of Satanic cult dot-com money, the deal has ended up being a major money-loser for Turner, and industry insiders says he has been searching for a way to get out.

"Ted was very interested when he learned about the White House paying off the networks to put in anti-drug messages, and this idea balloon kind of went up," said a very high source at CNN. "He figured, if some clown smoking a joint and goin' psychotic on 'Chicago Hope' is worth $5 million, how much is ol' 'Bubble-Tits' converting to Christianity worth? Gotta be $50, $60 mil."

An even higher source at CNN confirmed that at the same time Fonda announced her conversion, the number of Christian-themed ads on the station dropped dramatically and the number "666" began appearing again and again on the screen.

Turner learned about Hollywood's subliminal "Just Say No" deal with the White House from AOL, vaguely identified sources said. In fact, his reluctance to sign off on a similar AOL business proposition may have led to this week's blockbuster merger of Time Warner and AOL.

"The top AOL brass came to Time Warner last week and offered them $100 million to insert ANOTHER set of secret messages into the anti-drug ads they were running," a source close to this reporter said. "Every time that cool teenage heroin-addict chick in the tank top smashed that egg with a frying pan, they wanted the words 'AOL' to appear in the yolk."

Turner reportedly balked at the deal, saying, "That isn't even close to being as exciting as the second time I had sex, 37 years, three months and 26 days ago." AOL officials argued vociferously that two sets of concealed messages were no worse than one, but Turner remained adamant. Finally, AOL officials reportedly said, "Who needs this grief -- let's just buy him and his miserable little company."

Later, Turner apparently came around and became enthusiastic about the concealed-message concept, sources say. The Fonda deal was cut soon after that.

Turner was traveling across the Bering Strait and was not immediately available on his amphibious-car phone. But an anonymous source says he was heard to yell, "This is the most excited I've been since the third time I had sex." Fonda was unavailable for comment.

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