Of Rhymes and Reason: My Two Cents on the Sheehan Spectacle

August 29, 2005 | Dave Aland

[Natty Bumppo@frontier.net]

Of Rhymes and Reason

My Two Cents on the Sheehan Spectacle

By David J. Aland 29 August 2005

Martin Sheen visited Cindy Sheehan today. You know him – he’s not a President, but he plays one on TV. Al Sharpton visited Cindy Sheehan yesterday. You know him, too – he’s not a President either, but he keeps trying to run for the office. But what was significant about both visits is not that they are both pretenders to the Oval Office, but that the Sheehan Spectacle in Crawford, Texas, has reached the point of attracting celebrities. This clearly takes the entire phenomenon beyond its humble beginnings as one mother’s rage, and it’s sleazy hijacking by the radical Left. The Sheehan Spectacle is becoming respectable – or at least whatever passes for respectable amongst celebrities.

I have long wondered why so many people seem to think that celebrity has anything to do with either probity or sagacity, with the possible exception that the words rhyme badly. Martin Sheen, for example, persists in making grand pronouncements about foreign policy, despite the fact that he lacks any formal or informal education on the subject.

But he is not alone. The self-made auto-didacts of Hollywood are constantly shaking their uneducated but highly opinionated fingers at the heads of businesses and governments. What is galling is that they assume that they should be taken seriously.

This is the point at which Cindy Sheehan has arrived. Her original aim, as the grieving mother of a fallen soldier, was to tell the President that her son died in a war she did not condone. Give her credit – she was against the war from the start, even when her son, Casey, was still alive – she has been consistent. What has changed, however, is that she has been picked up by the radical Left and the media machine, and buffed up to the point that, like any other celebrity, she has begun to believe her own press. And, like a bad-mannered rock-and-roll idol in decline, she has begun to exchange her outrage for simply being outrageous.

Her son, a former altar boy and Eagle Scout, voluntarily enlisted at the age of 20, a year before 9-11, when his country was not yet at war. Four years later, with his unit certain to deploy to Iraq, he voluntarily re-enlisted. Although his specialty in the Army did not place him in the front lines, he nonetheless volunteered to be part of a rescue mission mounted on a Palm Sunday in Sadr City, a hotbed of radical Shiite insurgents. He died a hero in an ambush, where he chose to be, doing what he believed he must.

Ms Sheehan obviously does not agree with her son’s choices, and chooses to repudiate them in a rather spectacular manner. Her over-the-top Medean drama has pulled her into the orbit of the most opportunistic radical Left organizations, including MoveOn, CodePink, and others. Stoking her rage, stroking her ego, and stacking the media deck, these groups have re-made Ms Sheehan’s grief into an event, a spectacle. And they have re-made Ms Sheehan into a caricature.

Does she really believe what she says any more? Is America really “overtaken by murderous thugs” and is “not worth dying for”? Does she really believe “we are waging a nuclear war in Iraq” or that her son died “for a neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel”? Does she really believe Donald Rumsfeld is “a threat to our nation’s security” and that our President is “the biggest terrorist”, “an evil maniac”, and a “lying bastard”? Is this the emotional hyperbole of bereavement, or merely the pumped up sensationalist rhetoric of someone new to the celebrity game of shocking the audience into paying attention.

Cindy Sheehan clearly started with the former, and has clearly wandered into the latter. Her handlers from the “say-anything-as-long-as-it’s-anti-Bush” crowd clearly benefit from both, and clearly could care less which form it takes. They are also clearly the reason her grief has been transformed into this grotesque spectacle – a spectacle so notable that now even the real celebrities have begun to show up. Does she really believe that all of this honors her son in any fashion whatsoever?

Celebrity is exploitive. Cindy Sheehan’s radical views and radical friends have exploited the death of a brave and dedicated soldier, and in doing so have not added anything of meaning to the discussion. If Ms Sheehan wants a reason for her son’s death, she should know that this is not it.

David J. Aland is a retired Naval Officer with a graduate degree in National Security Affairs from the U. S. Naval War College.

[newfrpr04]

She is clearly a string puppet of the Left (see today's toons for -Team screw America) Cindy is clearly being pulled by all of them, her message tangled in their bring down President Bush. Of course it didn't take to entise her to join the radicals.