It’s About Time

Check out Arthur’s response to the inchoate anger towards Cindy Sheehan. It’s a good one.

Returning to the present controversy about Mrs. Sheehan, one aspect of John Cole’s remarks deserves comment:

I think Cindy Sheehan has moved beyond the role of grieving mother, and is now a political figure who gets no free pass for her bizarre, outrageous, and offensive statements.

No one has ever maintained that Cindy Sheehan’s views are entitled to a “free pass.” But it is not her views that are being attacked: it is Cindy Sheehan as a person. Cole thinks many in the “anti-war left” are “cynically exploiting” Mrs. Sheehan’s tragedy. Perhaps some of them are. If that’s true, I wouldn’t like it much (although my mind-reading skills are not too advanced, so I can’t determine people’s motives that easily in the absence of sufficient evidence).

But here’s the truth, which I do not hesitate to name: given the propaganda onslaught that’s gone on for the last several years with regard to Iraq—and the propaganda onslaught that is now underway with regard to Iran, with a still willing and still servile media—I don’t give a damn. Cindy Sheehan is being “cynically exploited” in order to stimulate a national discussion about whether we should get the hell out of Iraq? Good. It’s about goddamned time.

Exactly. Although I’m pretty sure that Cindy Sheehan hasn’t been guided or exploited by anyone in her quest. “The left,” if you’re talking about organizations, can’t get it up to do anything that effective. Believe me, the Democrats would have peed their pants at the idea of sending a woman to Crawford to demand to see the president. It’s so awfully unseemly you know. Someone might get upset. Besides it isn’t manly and we want ever so much to be super-duper manly.

In fact, last year at this time, if you’ll recall, Max Cleland went down to Crawford and wheeled his chair right up to the gate. The Democrats got all nervous that it was too … undignified. Max was getting a little bit shrill, you see, and looked like he might be getting ready to force the secret service to push him off the property in his wheelchair. How indelicate.

No, this was a grassroots move started by one individual who felt strongly enough to put herself on the line. No leftwing group could have ever orchestrated anything this successful.

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