The Right opportunist zealots with Sheehan

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The Right opportunist zealots with Sheehan


Ed Gurowitz
August 28, 2005


The Right has a favorite tactic that, if you don't have too high a regard for the truth, has until recently been very effective Ð when there is a setback to what you are doing, change the subject. Richard Clarke says the Administration was inattentive before 9/11? Question his character. Thomas Wilson questions Rumsfeld about armor? Call him a media plant. Karl Rove is under fire? Nominate John Roberts to the Supreme Court ahead of schedule. Public support for the war in Iraq is eroding? Assassinate Cindy Sheehan's character. Character assassination is a tactic dear to Rove's heart that has been adopted widely on the Right. It's not a new tactic, of course - it is a descendant of the "big lie" propaganda technique - tell lies, tell them loudly, and tell them often and a certain number of people will believe they are true.

Cindy Sheehan has chosen to protest the war in a very public way, and others have rallied to her banner at the Bush ranch in Texas. She has made a meeting with the President her goal, and I think that is a poor choice for a number of reasons, but it is a choice she and others are free to make. From the point of view of the Right, however, this makes her fair game for slander. Her marriage, her motives, her dead son all become grist for the vicious mill of the radical right wing press and commentators.

No one can know what is in Ms Sheehan's heart or her mind, or what was in her late son's; She has lost a son, and I can only feel compassion for her loss. She has not represented herself as anything but a grieving mother who wants to know why her son died. She has not claimed to represent anyone else, and certainly not to represent other mothers who have lost their children, yet the Right has rallied other grieving parents to say she does not speak for them.

OK, fine. I don't know how I would react if I lost one of my children, and I would venture to say that that tragedy is something each person must find their own way to deal with. I do not think that the parents who support the war are any righter or wronger than Ms Sheehan - everyone has to come to terms with their loss in their own way.


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http://www.tahoebonanza.com/article/20050828/Opinion/108280011