A left-leaning look at the stories and people that build, shape, manipulate, encourage, and/or contribute to the downfall of the United States.

Saturday, August 13, 2005

Cindy the Dove

I'd like to send some kudos out to Cindy Sheehan, the mother of deceased Iraq soldier Casey Sheehan who I'm sure you've all heard is staging a protest outside of Bush's ivory Texas tower to demand that he speak to her and explain WHY her son died, for her dedication and commitment to the pro-peace message; she understands the importance of this better than anyone else, I guarantee.
The media has been quite excited about the event, giving interviews with Cindy and her cohorts, reporting on the happenings, and, in the case of the O'Reillys and Hannitys, trying to find a suitable angle for discrediting her. Some of you may be wondering why the media has reported so well while other war protests, such as the millions of peace-lovers worldwide who marched in February of 2003, in a desperate attempt to stop the war, were given somewhat fleeting coverage. While it's true that the magnitude of this was arguably the single largest mass protest in history (Link), the magnitude of its coverage in the American press was somewhere between a woman giving birth to septuplets and an attractive young white girl being kidnapped.

It's actually very simple: Cindy lends a friendly, down-to-earth, reasonable face to the peace movement. She's very easy to identify with: there are millions of parents out there, and I'd be willing to bet that not many of them want their children being murdered in a foreign country while the man who sent him enjoys multiple month-long vacations on his Crawford ranch. Bush is a political Mr. Magoo when you get right down to it. He's obviously clueless and mentally shortsighted; he just mindlessly meanders from one place to the next, leaving a path of disaster in his wake but always emerging unscathed.

Excuse me. Back to the point: Cindy isn't a "radical leftist" like Michael Moore or Ted Kennedy; she's merely a concerned parent, and that's something extremely easy to relate to, even if you don't agree with her. Well, in truth she might be a radical, but that's unimportant in this context. Speaking superficially (which is all the American media ever does), she doesn't seem radical, and that's what counts. Even the Bush people realize this, and as a result have had to handle her a little more delicately than they would the average anti-war protester. While it normally would be acceptable for the Bush administration to nonchalantly dismiss war opponents as nutty liberals, George has actually said publically that he "sympathizes" with Mrs. Sheehan, though he disagrees with her.
Even Bill O'Reilly has softened, if ever so slightly. Normally he would accuse protesters who have gotten this much press coverage of being communists who hold an irrational hatred of their country and the very freedom it allows them to exercise. But O'Reilly has stuck to his promise to treat her with respect and dignity, merely accusing her of being a delirious puppet of communists who hold an irrational hatred of their country and the very freedom it allows them to exercise.
As sad as it is, this is a major step in the right direction for Bill O'Reilly.

I hope Cindy never gets to speak with George Bush. It will only serve to emphasize that he has so negligible a case for Iraq that he can't even justify it to a grieving middle-aged suburban mother.
posted by SwiftyLeZar at 2:17 PM