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Audacity of Truth
Gaffetastic:
Vice President Joe Biden had his “oops” moment Wednesday speaking in a 49er-crazed SF when he told a crowd at a city political fundraiser that “the Giants are on their way to the Super Bowl.” - SF Chronicle, 1-18-12
Huffin’ and puffin’
Cindy Sheehan wrote a message posted at the Huffington Post, directed towards Drudge, apparently in an attempt to "remind" him that this wasn’t "about her" but about the war. Many (of course) came to her defense and to show support against those evil rabid right wingers who have the nerve to question the motivations of those "supporting" her. Hence the name of my post about the matter. You can check out the "make love, not war" offerings here (make sure to scroll down). I was glad to see (and I admit I didn’t scroll down and read every message) that the posts there by people questioning what she wrote were civil and direct (now, it could very well be that any offending messages were deleted – I don’t know). Asking why she considered Bush the world’s "biggest terrorist" and whether or not she really said her son died "for Israel", that sort of thing. But reading the defenses/supportive messages to her gave me an almost surreal feeling. 
Hollywood, of course, is lining up behind Ms. Sheehan’s "campaign" as well (that’s Richard Dreyfuss in the photo). I’m sure that comes as a surprise to absolutely no one. One wonders when Michael Moore will make his first ‘official’ public appearance in support of Ms. Sheehan (I just *can’t wait* for that one). On a related note, Patrick Sheehan has finally spoken out about his wife’s campaign. See Patterico’s post on this for more. Guest columnist Janice Shaw Crouse, Ph.D. has an article posted at Townhall.com that raises questions about the media’s culpability in pushing this story in light of the fact that the woman in the center of this story seems to have become, as Crouse describes her, "unhinged":
The media frenzy surrounding Cindy Sheehan, the woman who lost a son in Iraq, is a prime example of what has gone wrong with 24-hour “news” coverage. The woman is clearly unhinged, and while we need to respect her grief at losing her son, it is now abundantly evident that her campaign has moved beyond her personal loss to her political ideology. It is embarrassing and inhumane for the media to expose this poor women’s unbalanced behavior. Somebody needs to step in to provide her with a quiet place to rest and, one would hope, regain her rationality and emotional balance. It is terribly sad to see the press –– bored from a slow-news August and the forced inactivity in Crawford, Texas –– exploit someone who has become a crackpot. Cindy Sheehan’s campaign long ago lost any pretense of being a mother’s grief-stricken reaction to her son’s tragic death. When Sheehan’s 24-year-old son, Casey, was killed in Baghdad last year, she founded an antiwar organization called Gold Star Families. Now, she has combined Madison Avenue and K Street by hiring a political consultant, public relations advisors, and establishing a website in an organized effort to keep the cameras on her and her cause. All that high-powered activity is being funded by three major-league, Far Left sponsors –– Moveon.org (notorious for Michael Moore’s efforts to keep the President from being re-elected), TrueMajority (established by the liberal Ben and Jerry’s ice cream dynasty) and Democracy for America –– and seems to be linked to an orchestrated effort to harass and embarrass President Bush.
Read the whole thing. Talk show host Frank Beckmann had this to say about the anti-war grief exploiters, er "supporters":
They ought to be ashamed of themselves, but they’re not. They are the hate-filled, "Get Bush" crowd members who have now turned Cindy Sheehan’s publicity stunt into a circus sideshow. Sheehan’s son, Casey, was a U.S. soldier who was killed last year in Iraq. She has staged a sit-in near the Crawford, Texas, ranch of President George W. Bush and claimed that the president killed her son. Cindy Sheehan became an overnight darling of cable television, national newspapers and, of course, the left-wing anti-war groups. They should have stopped there. Instead, they sensed an opportunity to parlay this woman’s grief into their own selfish partisan purposes, but they ruined Sheehan’s credibility.
Agreed, for the most part. But Ms. Sheehan has done a fair bit herself as far as ruining her credibility goes …. and it’s sad. Overwhelming grief sometimes does that to people. I feel sorrow and sympathy for her, but remain disgusted with many of her exploitative hangers-on. Late morning update: Powerline provides some photos from Crawford that *don’t* include anti-war protestors in them. Saturday update: Michelle Malkin has more on the Summer of Cindy.
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23 Responses to “Huffin’ and puffin’”
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So, it’s no longer about Cindy Sheehan’s loss of her son, it’s been twisted and corrupted so it’s all about the Iraq war… which is where Cindy Sheehan lost her son. And her emotions have evolved away from “personal loss,” for which she blames the Iraq war, “to her political ideology,” which blames… the Iraq war.
Gotcha. Crystal clear.
Sigh.
“Gotcha. Crystal clear.
Sigh.”
Unfortunately, no you don’t.
Sigh indeed.
I blame WW2 for the loss of some of my ancestors. We shouldn’t have fought that war and we shouldn’t have rebuilt Germany for 10 years costing us over 10,000 troops and we shouldn’t have rebuilt Japan for 7 years costing us thousands more troops. That is just occupation and they didn’t want us there. We should’ve left and created a power vacuum.
I like Baklava; he’s fun. What about opposition to one particular war do you think entails opposition to all wars, exactly? And does it work with Star Wars? If I didn’t like Phantom Menace, does that mean Empire wasn’t justified?
ST—
Unfortunately, no you don’t.
Ermm… yeah. Did you need the [/sarcasm] markers? My point is, I don’t get it, because it doesn’t make any sense. But I’ll be more clear: I don’t understand what is illegitimate about people opposed to the war using a woman who lost her son in the war as a symbol of what’s bad about the war. If you could explain it to me….
People! People! This “make love not war” idea is old fashioned! Can’t we all agree to “make love and war”?
Seriously though, I will explain to Jack Roy what’s bad about using Ms. Sheehan as a symbol about what’s bad about the war. By using her as your symbol, you are automatically attached to her opinions. Her opinions if adopted, are dangerous to human lives. I just posted about this over at politicalteen. It’s not quite the same discussion, but it’s close, so I’m going to copy and paste it. It ‘splains’ why she’s not a good person to listen to. Her trajic loss doesn’t even enter into the picture.
ps. please add a ‘preview’ button Ms Jah. Thanks!
- JR …. If you don’t understand the wrong in rallying your party base, raising money for the DNC, and just bald-faced propaganda and opportunism using the pity card, exploiting an obviously around the bend woman, you need to go back and ask your poly-sci prof why he lied to you about the sort of reactions you could expect from people that don’t believe in nefarious “usage”.
- ST – As Ann Coulter says, this is what happens when Liberals start throwing around terms they don’t understand.( i.e Mother Dowd and her 6 martini column, whom by the way, I can only hope keeps her promise if Chaney decides to throw his hat in the ring).
That’s one of the endearing qualities of the frenetic left. They have this habit of asking IF they can do something without ever asking themselves SHOULD they do it. They’ll gladly throw the baby out with the bath water if it furthers their “cause”. They never seem to get the idea that when the activism strategies you employ immediately alienates
your target audience, things are not going to go well.
I agree absolutely with Janice Crouse and Frank Beckman. If it wasn’t for the media, no one would know who Cindy Sheehan is and the left would not be exploiting her for their evil purposes. Cindy and the leftist crazies will leave Crawford the day that the cameras and reporters leave.
Kevin—
Thank you for your thoughtful and responsive reply. I must respectfully disagree, but it’s always more fun to disagree with an intelligent and coherent position. And the “love and war” line is pretty funny.
Enough with the niceness:
By using her as your symbol, you are automatically attached to her opinions.
I have to say this is a new rule of metaphysics to me. The group of people who oppose the war have myriad opinions about the propriety of staying or leaving—some think now that we’re in it we gotta win it; some think immediate withdrawal is necessary; some have opinions in between—that diversity of opinion doesn’t seem to be complicated by them agreeing that going to war in the first place was a bad idea.
Furthermore, just as a general matter, what part of symbolism causes this result? Are those who use Pat Tillman’s obligated to uphold all of his opinions? And how far does that go—could you not use Tillman as a symbol and at the same time cheer for his old division rival the 49ers?
I could agree that there’s some merit to your idea, but I think it’s far more circumscribed than the purpose to which you put it. Certainly using a symbol entails the endorsement of the expressive content that the symbol inherently connotes. But all that inheres in the symbol of Ms. Sheehan is the human cost of the war; she doesn’t particularly represent any remedial scheme. And her supporters don’t naturally endorse her position favoring immediate withdrawal, any more than they endorse her favored tax plan or her feelings about fashion and reality television. Separate ideas ought to be considered and addressed separately. If someone were used as a symbol of immediate withdrawal—say, if Harry Houdini were escaping handcuffs and chains while sinking into a pit of quicksand labeled “Iraq”—then criticizing that person’s plan for withdrawal would be completely appropriate. But with Ms. Sheehan it is pretty off-topic.
Big Bang—
sentence edited out by ST
Oh, and some quibbles: “i.e.” means “that is”; I suspect you intended “e.g., Maureen Dowd,” for exemplis gratia (correct spelling not guaranteed), or “for example.”
And “who,” not “whom.” Whom is a a pronoun in the objective case. A good test is to substitute “he” and “him” for “who” and “whom” to see which you should use.
And I’ll have to disagree with you and your citation to Ann Coulter; I’m perfectly content on my side of the fence. By 51%-45% Americans say the president is not doing a good job, and by 56%-43% they say the war is going moderately or very badly. So, irrespective of the terms I use without understanding, precisely what am I supposed to be upset about?
Jack Roy: “Thank you for your thoughtful and responsive reply. I must respectfully disagree, but it’s always more fun to disagree with an intelligent and coherent position. ”
Which has been what the responses to you about this issue have been: intelligent and coherent. Your swipes at the intelligence of others here aren’t winning you many friends, or at the very least, people who want to continue to debate you on the merits of your opinion. I’ll say again I think you make some good points but they’d be better expressed without taking swipes at the intelligence of who you debate against here. We’re all adults, so let’s keep the conversations adult and operate on the assumption that we all have an IQ over 50, shall we? Any future swipes at someone’s intelligence will be edited. Thank you.
Kevin: I’ll see what I can do on the preview button
- ST ….. FOX is reporting an explosion in Downtown SF at a Ralph/Lauren store…
Firstly, I must say that it’s heartening to speak to an anti war person who doesn’t swear every other word. I swear (quite often unfortunately), but never during a discussion, as it seriously detracts from my argument.
Let me use a few examples. I am a republican. If I walked around with an elephant poster, would you assume:
I’m pro-life? (I’m not)
I’m religious? (I’m not)
Bush makes no mistakes? (Only Reagan can make that claim
I believe that the christian way of life is the best. If I walked around with a big crucifix, would you assume:
I’m christian? (I’m not really)
I don’t believe in evolution? (I do)
I want religion in politics (in or out doesn’t matter to me)
you must be wondering what my point is by now
. the point is, I dont’ use either of those symbols because I agree with most, but not nearly all of the things they stand for.
Ms. Sheehan stands for:
War is bad
Troops out of everywhere
Israel is bad (may have retracted this one, but only partially)
US is bad
Bush and his buddy Halliburton is bad
Peace, by appeasement
If you don’t agree with these things she is standing for, then you should think twice about using her as your symbol.
I have to say that I dont understand this paragraph:
But I would suggest that the team he played for is not the same as things he ‘stood’ for. I hope I understood you correctly.
- Oh and Roy has moved off the debate radar screen with his incessant anal retentive grasmmerical nit picking. It reflects the genreal plight of those on the left who have no real message or amswers, and therefore are driven to deflect from the debate. Its a little like argueing foreign policy with a rodeo clown. A useless endeavor, even if he did stay at a Holiday inn express last night.
- I included several purpuseful typo’s in the previous post, just to give him something to do with his time….:lol:
- Notible quotes from the Sheehan saga:
“The left has bestowed its highest award on Mrs. Sheehan – victim”……
A useless endeavor, even if he did stay at a Holiday inn express last night.
Okay, that’s pretty funny.
Kevin—
If it makes you feel more at home, I’d be happy to drop the word “poo” in a few more times.
My point with the AZ Cardinals reference is that surely there are many associations we can make with an individual; not all of them have that transitive property of semantics whereby endorsement of the individual connotes endorsement of the association. Tillman may not have reached such a level of association with his team, so take Lou Gehrig—he’s in the truest sense a New York Yankee. He’s also Boston Red Sox Curt Schilling’s favorite player. But for Schilling, Gehrig is about the records, the dedication, and the ALS, not the AL East standings.
You draw the line between what team he played for and what things he “stood” for. I think that exercise is useful, but I’m trying to point out that defining what he “stood” for, or what Ms. Sheehan stands for, isn’t a self-defining question.
Conceptually, one can imagine an infinite number of degrees where one could draw the line between what associations we can fairly impute to Ms. Sheehan’s supporters and those that are too attenuated. The list can be very short, or it may go on forever. And there’s many places to draw the line. You seem to think—and please correct me if I’m wrong—that Sheehan’s symbolic value extends to pretty much all the wartime activities of the U.S. during Bush’s term in office, covering the consequences of those war and all the improper motives for it. I simply cannot accept that interpretation; I think that supporting Cindy Sheehan endorses two ideas—first, that the military objectives of war in Iraq do not justify the loss of American life thereby incurred, and to a lesser extent, that President Bush is something like a coward for not having a conversation with her. (I’m uneasy with my phrasing of that last part; I’m aware he spoke to her before, and I’m really not comfortable with the word “coward,” but I’m writing this on the fly and nothing better is coming to mind.) So I don’t think Sheehan stands for, say, opposition to the war in Afghanistan (although she may oppose it) because supporting her and supporting the Afghan war are totally consistent; they don’t logically conflict, even if they have discordant associations in the eyes of some. Contrariwise, if someone were to support both Cindy Sheehan and the decision to go to war in Iraq, there’s really no way to interpret it but that such a person would be missing the point.
Anyway, just sayin’.
- Roy …. the only coherent sentence in that last rambling aimless bloviation occured at the very end where you said:
“….there’s really no way to interpret it but that such a person would be missing the point.”
- I’m pretty sure every poster here caught that about your problem several dozen posts ago…… So you can stop repeating yourself now…..
Ms. Sheehan nor her son deserve one another!!
That’s pretty harsh, Shooter.
- A bit off topic, But in connection with “Able Danger”, isn’t it strange how Arlen Spectre and the other Democratic leadership on the 9/11 Commission seem to be MIA suddenly, and immitating the three chinese monkeys, of speak, see, and hear no evil. I guess the left knows it would be folly to argue Clinton’s 8 years of inaction against ChimpyBush’s 8 months, and would very much like to forget the trail that would ultimately lead back to Mz Reno and her deputy, the originators of the “Seccom Wall” under direction from the Clinton Whitehouse. Veddy veddy interesting……
I don’t think it harsh to say that Sheehan and her son don’t deserve one another.
She surely doesn’t deserve a son who volunteered to serve his country in harm’s way, knowing full well what the consequences could be. Not by her disgusting conduct and the lies she has told about her country. She must be intelligent enough to realize she is being used as a ‘useful idiot’ by the real operatives on the left.
Read Saul Alinsky.
As for her son, he hardly deserves to have his memory desecrated and used by his own mother for anti American purposes.
I don’t think that’s harsh at all!
I don’t know if anybody covered this yet, but left don’t give a crap about Cindy. Because Cindy has become a public figure the leftist are using her to publizice their own twisted views. This was confirmed in a Mondays Dallas Morning News article by local marxist Laray Polk entitled ‘This protest is bigger that Cindy Sheehan; It may well be a turning point in history’. The essence of Polk’s article was to compare the Vietnam peace movement with the current leftist protests stating ‘The Vietnam War was ultimately halted because people who had been directly involved in the fighting became activist. Divisions along national lines and private households were created.’ In summary, this article is an admission that the leftist goal is to see the USA defeated by the terrorists. If this is not treason I don’t know what is. In the non-pc world of yesterday, people who spout such anti-American rhetoric would not be walking free.
cindy’s really hitting a nerve with the wingers. that 30 some percent poll rating for the war performance can’t be good.