Cindy Sheehan is probably in all actuality threatened with real physical violence on the internet daily…most likely a drunk college republican. The right wing slanderers like Ann Coulter either try to make it out that Sheehan’s situation is fortunate…
“Call me old-fashioned, but a grief-stricken war mother shouldn’t have her own full-time PR flack. After your third profile on “Entertainment Tonight,” you’re no longer a grieving mom; you’re a C-list celebrity trolling for a book deal or a reality show.”
Well what’s your excuse then? You whore yourself around on TV so much, even in an off election-year when your party controls 3 levels of government and you must already be rich and you still find the time to come up with yet another book on how much liberals suck? Her son died in a war that was started under false premises, the biggest rebuff to her wanting to meet with the president is “but she already has,” yet you and your whole pajama medie fanatics just can’t get enough of making fun of Sheehan! So much so that many think she has been lionized by the liberal blogosphere which is simply not true! She knows what she’s doing, her voice has only been amplified by the internet.
So you’re the guy who gave money to Howard Dean even though you live off of student loans, can’t help but scream profanity when a friend turns the TV to Fox “News,” and could talk for hours about how invading Iraq was simply stupid. Every one who knows you avoids even mentioning the word ‘Republican’ because you’ll start frothing at the mouth, and really who wants to hear you drone on about hypocrisy of pre-emptive wars again? So you learn to shut up, write DailyKos diaries no one reads, and bide your time to try again in 2008: but then she comes along.
With a simple protest Cindy Sheehan, has managed to revive the national debate on why we went to war more effectively than the entire liberal blogosphere. And while her pull seems to be waning, the American people are beginning to wake up to the reality that Operation Iraqi Freedom is a sham. So how did she come to dominate national news, for a short-while, in the first place? Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh would love to blame it on the “liberal” media, but that’s their justification for anything that doesn’t conform to their predetermined world-view: obviously the effectiveness of Sheehan’s protests in garnering media attention is much more complicated.
Cindy Sheehan makes good news because she is a sympathetic mother who is raising questions that our President avoids answering. As a mother of a dead soldier she commands our society’s respect. Jack Lule, Professor and Chair at the Department of Journalism and Communication at Lehigh University, cites anthropologist James Freeman, writing that “mother worship reflects or is derived in part from the deep biopsychological bond that infants develop with an adult, usually, but not invariably, the mother (Lule, page 105).” It’s difficult for the Right-Wing media to resort to its usual smear tactics (e.g. Michael Moore is fat and rich, therefore everything he says is irrelevant) because mothers nurse, nurture, and nourish (Lule, page 106).
In a Democracy we expect our leaders to listen to its citizens. Cindy Sheehan is just another ordinary American-mother, one of over 2,000 mothers who know what it’s like to have lost a child for Bush’s pre-emptive war on Iraq (not to mention the 15,000+ injured). I can’t imagine what it’s like to lose a son in a war that was started under false pretenses, and neither can Yale elitists like Ann Coulter who mock Sheehan. Why does Sheehan really want to meet with the President again? Is it the money? The glam? The threats of college Republicans? I highly doubt it: I think she’d like some closure in her life.
So what are the questions she and many of us want answered by our President? Why does the Bush Administration continually handout no-bid contracts to companies directly tied to Dick Cheney despite substantial corruption charges? And who is going to pay for this war? Why is Bush using his 51% political mandate to pass social-spending cuts and upper-income tax-cuts during a time of war? Especially when our soldiers are being sent into combat unprepared? Why was Bush so determined to go to war with Iraq, even before 9-11?
Now there are many who say that by simply asking these questions, Cindy Sheehan and liberals are aiding the enemy. But according to the American Heritage Dictionary terrorism is defined as:
“The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.”
Now who sounds more intimidated by the terrorists, President Bush:
“They intend to strike the United States to the limits of their power. They seek weapons of mass destruction to kill Americans on an even greater scale.”
Or Cindy Sheehan:
“For dKos readers:
Trust me. I don’t feel lionized by you.
I do feel supported and loved.
I hope I will still get that support. I counted on it during the Camp Casey August days and you all helped me thru the smears and swiftboating.
Please don’t feel that you are added additional stress to me by sending me supportive comments.
Women don’t live by bread alone.”
So who is aiding the terrorists? A President who needs to run a campaign of fear and paranoia to win just 51% of the vote, or an ordinary American mother willing to sleep in a ditch in order to ask our President some questions?
