Cindy Sheehan, Patriot
On April 4, 2004, Casey Sheehan was killed in action in Sadr City, Baghdad. Since that devastating day, Casey's mother, Cindy Sheehan, has channeled her grief into activism -- she's spoken out against the war, against the president and about the Downing Street Memo. Until recently she's remained a somewhat fringe figure, appearing often on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now and posting to progressive blogs. But that has all changed. This morning she was interviewed for Good Morning America and soon she will be appearing on the cover of People Magazine -- she is becoming the face of the grieving families of the war dead and is thrusting the anti-war movement into the mainstream.
It is a movement that the hawkish media has largely helped the conservatives to marginalize. Bill O'Reilly cut the mic of a 9/11 victim's son who started to spout anti-war rhetoric on his show; even the seemingly benign Bob Costas, filling in for Larry King, copped an antagonistic tone with the famously anti-war Vanessa Redgrave; and The New York Times front-paged Judith Miller's articles promoting the fiction that Iraq did indeed have WMDs leading up to the war (helping to legitimize whatever reason the adminstration's wheel of rationales landed on that week) leaving any coverage of anti-war marches or the like MIA.
But recently, as the fatality rate in Iraq has risen and the popularity of the war has plummetted, anti-war sentimenthas become less taboo, less traitorous despite what conservatives would have one believe. So Cindy Sheehan seems to be at the exact right place at the exact right time: outside of Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, a place dubbed Camp Casey, where she is waiting for the president to explain to her exactly what noble cause her son died for. She has vowed to stay throughout the month of August or until Bush speaks to her. Something tells me she should get comfortable, she'll be there a while.
Learn more about Cindy's "peaceful occupation" HERE and HERE. And read her blog entry for today HERE.
More on this ongoing story tomorrow.
It is a movement that the hawkish media has largely helped the conservatives to marginalize. Bill O'Reilly cut the mic of a 9/11 victim's son who started to spout anti-war rhetoric on his show; even the seemingly benign Bob Costas, filling in for Larry King, copped an antagonistic tone with the famously anti-war Vanessa Redgrave; and The New York Times front-paged Judith Miller's articles promoting the fiction that Iraq did indeed have WMDs leading up to the war (helping to legitimize whatever reason the adminstration's wheel of rationales landed on that week) leaving any coverage of anti-war marches or the like MIA.
But recently, as the fatality rate in Iraq has risen and the popularity of the war has plummetted, anti-war sentimenthas become less taboo, less traitorous despite what conservatives would have one believe. So Cindy Sheehan seems to be at the exact right place at the exact right time: outside of Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, a place dubbed Camp Casey, where she is waiting for the president to explain to her exactly what noble cause her son died for. She has vowed to stay throughout the month of August or until Bush speaks to her. Something tells me she should get comfortable, she'll be there a while.
Learn more about Cindy's "peaceful occupation" HERE and HERE. And read her blog entry for today HERE.
More on this ongoing story tomorrow.
posted by Todd at 1:56 PM
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