Cindy Who?
by Vincent Fiore
29 November 2005
http://www.intellectualconservative.com/article4768.html
What if you threw a protest party and nobody cared enough to come?
Okay, so I'm not referring to "little Cindy Lou-Who," the beloved character from Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
Rather, I mean that other Cindy, who did indeed reach star-like status for a while, but was soon cast aside like last week's three-day-old newspaper. No, America remembers Cindy Sheehan, but not as the anti-war icon that the old media still tries to report her to be.
America remembers Cindy Sheehan as a distraught and misguided mother who willingly became a tool of the anti-war and Bush-hating left. Back in August, Sheehan had the makings of a perfect storm: Summer recess in Washington, and a scandal-starved media that played Sheehan -- as she played them -- for all it was worth.
Truly, an incestuous relationship was born; for Cindy Sheehan hated Bush, and the old media loved broadcasting that hate far and wide. But after about three weeks of such putrid prose by Sheehan, like calling President Bush a "lying bastard," "filth-spewer and warmonger," and the "biggest terrorist in the world," even a progressively perverted media got the idea that they had a one-trick pony on their hands, and an ineffective and polarizing one at that.
So was there life after Crawford, Texas, in August for Cindy Sheehan? In September, Sheehan toured the country in an anti-war caravan, and starred in the anti-war protest in Washington, having her named invoked by the likes of Jesse Jackson and Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey (D-CA).
Sheehan then became the first of 370 protesters on September 26 to be arrested for sitting themselves down in front of the White House. Sheehan smiled for the cameras, and waved a wave that seemed to suggest that America's "Mother of all protesters" was quite happy to be the media's golden calf again.
But that was then. Since Cindy Sheehan's brush with the law in September, she has been about as integral and mainstream to society as two-dollar bills and Cabbage-patch kids.
So what is this icon-of-a-mother/protester/media tool/leftist dream-date doing these days?
Why, she's back at Crawford, giving thanks on Thanksgiving for the less-than-enthusiastic coverage she received to lead about 200 anti-war protesters against President Bush, and the war in Iraq.
So what if you threw a protest party and nobody cared enough to come? Ask Cindy Sheehan, who was once labeled by no less a media gadfly than New York Times "fematorialist" Maureen Dowd as having "absolute moral authority" in regard to the war in Iraq.
Ask Sheehan, who has become as radical as anyone over at MoveOn.org, or any black-masked anarchist who holds up a sign which depicts Hitler imposed over the likeness of George W. Bush.
Ask Sheehan, who says nothing in regards to what it was that Saddam Hussein was doing in Iraq for decades -- you know, the gassing, torturing, mass-grave digging Saddam Hussein.
Or ask the anti-war iconoclast why she demands a pullout of American troops out of Afghanistan, and even New Orleans. And here, you must begin to question Sheehan's basic functionality.
Sheehan was referring to the thousands of National Guardsmen that were assisting the Hurricane Katrina victims, and the storm-weary populace. It is difficult to put into proper perspective just what this means when one hears what passes for policy out of the mouth of Cindy Sheehan. Deranged would probably, and properly, be a good start.
But when you openly castigate your own country as opposed to terrorism, or call the Islamofascists in Iraq who are daily killing our soldiers "freedom fighters," Sheehan is not helping her cause.
Sheehan may be appealing to the ultra-small minority of anti-war zealots who are also anti-everything else that seems to originate from America, but she is not winning over the general populace.
And while the media may have once loved Cindy Sheehan, even they realize that the recent polls that show America's displeasure with President Bush's leadership in Iraq do not translate into the hate-America crowd that Sheehan runs with.
That is why Sheehan is yesterday's news, and her views regarding Iraq and the war on terrorism in general are looked upon as just so much ill-advised twaddle. There is no mass movement that wants Cindy Sheehan to lead it, unless one counts the enemies of America.
Of course, there are those who are vested in seeing a pullout in Iraq, thereby leaving a hole big enough for a terrorist to drive a truck-bomb through, straight to America's shores.
Americans realize this in regard to Cindy Sheehan, and waste no further energy upon her. The old media have gone on to the next "gotcha" scandal in the never-ending saga of the hunting of George W. Bush, and have tossed Sheehan to the side, as they have all the other supposed "can't miss" stories that were destined to bring down a president.
See ya, Cindy. I can't say it was fun to watch your circus-like performances of anti-Bushism that doubled as anti-Americanism, but you put on one hell of a show.
Your presence, either by the media or the masses, is no longer required. It never truly was. With all courtesies, I say yet again: Cindy Sheehan, go home.
