Bree Walker
Posted on 06/16/2007 6:21:03 PM PDT by rface
DEL MAR – A lifetime of quiet activism propelled ex-anchorwoman Bree Walker to take over what many consider ground zero of the anti-war movement.
Last Saturday, she handed a check for $87,000 to peace activist Cindy Sheehan for 5 acres of Texas scrub near President Bush's Crawford ranch.
Bree Walker
“This is the first time in my life I had a moment like this,” Walker said.
Sheehan had bought the land using the insurance payment she received when her soldier son, Casey Sheehan, was killed five days after his deployment to Iraq. He was 24.
Camp Casey. That's what Sheehan called the place where she camped in the August heat of 2005. What brought her there, she told journalists from around the globe, was to ask the president why her son died, for what purpose?
Sheehan's protest helped turn public opinion against the war. Nearly three-quarters of Americans disapprove of the president's handling of the war, according to a May 24 New York Times/CBS News poll.
Walker, 54, is a college dropout who worked her way up from rock 'n' roll disc jockey to star anchorwoman in America's biggest media markets, from San Diego to Los Angeles and New York. The three-time divorcee lives in an $1.8 million Del Mar home after walking away from her network career to raise two children.
So what is Walker doing with Camp Casey?
“You mean, I don't have a dead son, so what right do I have?” she said.
Her husky voice softened as she admitted, “I've tried to put myself in Cindy's shoes, and I can only imagine the pain.”
Advertisement Walker and Sheehan bonded 18 months ago when they met, Walker said. She wanted to buy Sheehan's life story for the television production company she owns with ex-husband Jim Lampley, an HBO commentator with whom she remains close.
Over Memorial Day, Sheehan announced her retirement from the peace movement, citing failing health and frustration with Congress for continuing to fund the war. The woman some have called the Rosa Parks of the peace movement was selling Camp Casey on the Internet auction site eBay.
Move America Forward, a group based in Sacramento with links to conservative talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh, wanted to buy the land. Walker, a liberal talk-radio host on Air America's Los Angeles affiliate, immediately offered the asking price, which she said is what Sheehan paid for it, plus improvement costs such as running water and a gravel road.
“I felt like this was hallowed ground,” Walker said. “How often do you get a grass-roots movement out of one woman's heartbreak?”
Walker cashed in the stock portfolio she painstakingly built during her network news years. It wasn't easy, she said, for she had grown up poor in Oakland and Minnesota. She saved 45 percent of every paycheck, fearful of returning to poverty.
But she also had grown up in the 1960s and felt the pain of a family divided, as much of the country was then. Her older brother was drafted, and she protested the Vietnam War.
As Carol Jahnkow, director of the Peace Resource Center of San Diego, said, “Bree stepping in and buying it is a testament to the work that Cindy did and also recognizes that the war continues and people are dying every day, and the peace movement needs to have a continued presence there.”
In a statement, Move America Forward urged Walker to work with families who have a different view of the war so that the land will become “a place where the troops can be honored without the anti-troop rhetoric that Ms. Sheehan has become famous for.”
For now, Walker's plans for Camp Casey include keeping it available for anti-war protests. Maybe she'll build a memorial, maybe a playground for the children of the 700-person town of Crawford, or maybe start a school for nonviolence training for youth. She will see the land for the first time during a three-day gathering of anti-war advocates beginning July 6.
Walker knows stepping forward carries a price – she has already received hate mail – but she has weathered personal storms before.
She has ectrodactylism, a genetic bone deformity of the hands and feet. Her brother and her children, Andrea, 18, and Aaron, 15, have it. When she was pregnant with her son, she publicly challenged a radio talk-show host who had focused national attention on her and her right to have children. Walker became a high-profile spokeswoman for disability rights because of her openness about her genetic disorder.
Earlier this year, she checked herself into a 30-day alcohol-abuse treatment program in West Los Angeles. There was no major crisis, she said, but a lifelong interest in health issues – she had wanted to become a doctor – helped her see danger signs.
“I'm proud of putting myself into treatment. That takes a certain amount of courage to admit that you have a problem that could get a whole lot worse.” She continues her sobriety in a 12-step program.
Of Camp Casey, she said: “There will be people who say that I am not supporting the troops, and that is not the truth. I support the troops because I want them home.”
“$1.8 million Del Mar home...”
In that area, that might not be so impressive.
“I’m proud of putting myself into treatment. That takes a certain amount of courage to admit that you have a problem that could get a whole lot worse.”
BWAHahahaha...you’re a real hero. Twit. (Not you rface, the nitwit this article is about.)
Oh, dear.
“...but a lifelong interest in health issues – she had wanted to become a doctor – helped her see danger signs.”
Oh c’mon, this must be satire.
Walker decided to go public with her ectrodactyly, a rare congenital deformity: her fingers and toes are fused together. She previously kept her deformed hands hidden inside a pair of glove-like prosthetic hands.So, since there are not many carnival freak shows anymore, she had seek such a thing out on cable TV to showcase her deformities.[snip]
Her career took a surprising twist during the 2003 season when she watched the show Carnivàle, an HBO television series about a Depression-era carnival traveling through the Dust Bowl. She noticed that no cast member had ectrodactyly. She requested, created, auditioned, and won the role of Sabina, The Scorpion Lady.
Sabina appeared in three episodes during the 2005 season. She showcases her webbed hands as the series probes public attitudes toward persons with highly visible disabilities. In Walker's own words: "I really get to be me." Walker based Sabina on characters she knew existed in the 1920s and 1930s carnival sideshows with names like Lobster Girl or Lobster Boy. These were typically the best jobs persons with ectrodactyly could have, with most others being hidden away.
Walker furthered her acting career in 2006 by appearing as an inspirational woman with ectrodactyly on the fourth season premiere of Nip/Tuck. She and her children were also featured on an episode of TLC's My Unique Family.
Actually, I believe his first tour was in Kuwait. He re-upped to go to Iraq.
I don’t know what’s more amazing...
That these supposedly high minded “intellectual” leftists who look down on things like beauty and wealth as petty materialism try so hard to be beautiful and wealthy, or that ANYONE thinks that plastic surgery such as Bree Walker’s has had actually has IMPROVED their looks.
These people are the epitome of deranged.
Bree, hon, back away from the plastic surgeons office, you have already had too much.
Notice the hands. And given her support of Sheehan, apparently her worst deformity is between her ears.
How quaint...they can continue to protest Bush after he is just a Texas bushwhacker. Maybe they can put in an armadillo sanctuary. Peace out.
Say....is she from CALIFORNIA?
Hideous. Inside and out.
I remember when that happened. (Must've been while she was an anchorbabe in NYC.)
Who was the talk radio host, anyone remember?
Funny, at the time I thought that experience might turn typical-MSM-liberal Bree Walker into a pro-life conservative. But now I see she's in Cindy Sheehan's camp -literally. Not likely she saw the light.
I suspect he unintentionally died in conflict affording his mother the freedoms which she chose to squander by her own self promotion and emulating homosexual antiwar activists ignoring her son's true honor.
She should write a book..........
titles anyone?
Always, when the anti-American left wants to use someone for their own purposes, and the subject is willing to be used, to further her own agenda.
That is a monumental INSULT to Rosa Parks, who was truly putting herself in danger by making the choice she did to NOT ride in the back of the bus.
Cindy knew she'd be lauded by the media, and she enjoyed traveling around the world on that notoriety, so it was no skin off her nose!
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