Why Are the Media Having Such a Hard Time Covering Cindy Sheehan?

[Catchawave]

Arianna Huffington
Fri Aug 19, 1:39 PM ET


As Gary Hart points out there is indeed a rich history of protest in America. From our Founding Fathers to abolitionists to suffragettes to labor strikers to civil rights marchers, protesters have repeatedly challenged the status quo and changed our society for the better.

So why are the mainstream media having such a hard time covering Cindy Sheehan?

It's as if the simple, direct, and starkly emotional nature of her stance is too raw for them to handle in any of the standard ways. So they've taken to treating her with a strange mix of detachment, condescension, distortion, and aggression.

Paula Zahn referred to her as "this woman." Edmund Morris alluded to her in the New York Times as an "emotional predator." And Dana Milbank wanted to "determine, once and for all, whether Cindy Sheehan is Rosa Parks or Lyndon Larouche."

more...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20050819/cm_huffpost/005884;_ylt=AkYNXyPZry119WQrpkFf8CT8B2YD;_ylu=X3oDMTA4MzQ0N2p2BHNlYwMxNzA0

[getmeouttahere]

1. Because you can't even take this horse to water....

let alone make it drink!

Rosa Parks or Lyndon LaRouche? I won't even touch that one! I had to hold back the vomit, literally!

[jimshoes]

2. The neocons hate it

when someone upsets their rose colored reality.

[rodeodance]

3. I think most of them know that she is someone they should stay away

from--it is like getting friendly with the enemy.

[Catchawave]

4. I'm glad she gave KO a shout out :)))

Huff writes...

"So you can imagine what a pleasure it was watching Keith Olbermann this week, who, instead of offering a "balanced," "on the one hand, on the other hand" look at Sheehan, named Limbaugh "today's worst person in the world" for his despicable Sheehan attack, saying "I guess the painkillers wipe out your memory along with your ethics."

[ladjf]

5. Cindy's ground is so high that the usual slime routines don't

work against her. She truly may have been the catalyst that started a new peace movement of 2005. It's too soon to know for sure.

[meow2u3]

8. The Repuke Slime Machine has become desperate

Their usual tactics are backfiring on them big time. cindy has exposed them as the treasonous scumbags they are: they don't care about the troops, only about following Bush down a steep cliff.

Watch for them to become increasingly violent to the point of murder. Never underestimate the viciousness of a desperate bully.

[ladjf]

9. If you mean the murder of Cindy, even the bad guys aren't

dumb enough to try that.

[rambler31]

6. Protesting is out

I have noticed that protests in general seem to be unpopular -- which is too bad because this is one of the citizens' right and also has led to a lot of positive social change.

Protesters seem to be looked down on for some reason --- it's too bad.

We seem to just swallow up what our leaders do without much of a debate or a challenge.

http://rambler31.blogspot.com

[teryang]

7. Here's why

The patriotic imagery of a mother and her dead warrior son transcends time and nations. This mythical image is one deeply and unconciously ingrained in the minds of citizens.

Cindy has presented herself as the symbol of the archetypal myth at Crawford. The war mongers have established a pattern of ignoring the sacrifices of our mother's sons in Iraq by a deliberate policy of censorship. Cindy, as the mythical icon personified, has brillantly outmaneuvered the image peddlers and beaten them at their own game.

Now that the justification for the war is shown convincingly to be a chameleon like fraud, where the threat is commonly known to be no threat, the dead warrior iconic image trumps the patriotric "we are in danger" "fight them over there" "build liberty in middle east" claptrap. Cindy Sheehan can not be met head on but only attacked with cheap smear tactics.

Great commentary by Huffington!