|
|
August 11, 2005Sheehan: The Company She KeepsI had not planned to write again about Mrs. Sheehan, but two things have changed my mind. The first is that Second Breakfast is posting a statement, apparently just issued to KSFO radio, supposedly from Mrs. Sheehan’s own family. I’d be happier if SB’s link to KSFO included the text of the statement and could confirm it, so I am not posting the “statement” at this time. I’m going to keep an eye on that, and see if the KFSO site confirms it. UPDATE: Okay, it seems to be confirmed here and Drudge is all over it, so I don’t need to be. I would caution only that this statement is from the Mrs. Sheehan’s in-law’s side of the family. Since she and her husband are now parted, one has to bear that in mind. The second reason I’m writing about Mrs. Sheehan is because this article from the NY Sun does raise the eyebrows about the company she is keeping, and only convinces me even more that her grief is being terribly exploited by the very people who support those who killed her son. What she is doing still does not make sense, no matter how much the sob-sister violin players in the press would like to pretend that it does. (This is not the first time I’ve wondered what color the sky is in Margaret Carlson’s world.) From the Sun:
My son Buster says he does not understand my concerns for Mrs. Sheehan, that she is being used and exploited. “Mom, she likes it,” he said last night. “When she met with the president the first time, she got into the papers with it - how many people meet him and parlay it into a news story? Now she’s in the papers again, people are paying attention to her, she has people petting her and telling her she is a hero. She loves this. She loves it more than she loves her husband, who separated from her because of what she is doing. She might be grieving, as you say, but she’s exploiting her own grief and allowing others to exploit her, too. It’s like an orgy.” Ahem - Buster and I do not always agree, and I don’t even know where he gets the “orgy” simile, and he’s off launching himself at baseballs, just now, so I can’t ask him to clarify. I don’t know if Mrs. Sheehan is “loving” this. But I do know that the company she is keeping is dubious, relentless and interested in embracing something quite different than democracy. Michelle Malkin has more, including lots of new links I hadn’t seen before, and a few examples of hate mail she has received which really make you wonder who the “haters” are. Patterico tries (in vain, I am sure) to instruct the press as to what exactly is wrong with Mrs. Sheehan’s very extreme shift in accounts of her previous meeting with President Bush. I have to wonder why a President who met with her before, and has seen her account of it move from “presidential sympathy” to “presidential partying,” would have any interest in meeting with her again. I know that if I had treated someone well (and before witnesses, for goodness sake) and that person had then publically turned the meeting into a caricature of idiocy…I’d be hard pressed to want to want to give that person any more of my time. Previous posts on Mrs. Sheehan: here and here. Selwyn Duke has a rather rough piece wherein he worries about the eagerness of some to put “grieving activists” into congress and the senate. I can’t say he doesn’t have a point. WELCOME: Michelle Malkin readers! While you are here, please look around. Today we’re also talking about Cake and the Divine Spark, the idea that maybe Sandy Berger’s Pants hold the key to a mystery, Attorney General Eliot Spitzers seeming reluctance to talk to Air America, and a new book that takes on the Myth of Hitler’s Pope. http://theanchoressonline.com/2005/08/11/the-company-she-keeps/trackback/ 12 Responses to “Sheehan: The Company She Keeps” |
August 11th, 2005 at 12:27 pm
Actually “orgy” is quite the right word, given its associations with self-indulgence and wallowing in one’s emotions (among other things). I hadn’t heard before that this has broken up her marriage, but given her public behavior I can’t blame Mr. Sheehan. Imagine having to live with that stuff.
Slightly OT and probably uncharitable but here it is anyway: a year or so ago I wrote to my Marine son (then in Iraq) and told him not to get killed because there were certain among his relatives whom I would not put it past to use the coffin as a soapbox for an anti-Bush rant. His reply was, “Don’t worry. If anyone tries that, I will sit up in the casket and fargin’ STRANGLE them.” I wonder how many servicemen would say the same.
August 11th, 2005 at 12:33 pm
Anchoress, I agreed with you when you first posted on this subject a few days ago, and said how you were feeling increasingly uneasy about this woman. I think Buster’s idea, that she’s enjoying this, is quite possible, and in fact is the most positive interpretation I can put on her behaviour. I strongly suspect something worse - the proper thing to say would be that she’s lost her mind, but I get a creepy feeling about her. I’m afraid to say it, but I fear that she’s possessed. She has a fury and energy for destruction that strike me as demonic. There’s a part in the Bible that reminds me of her: “And when he was come out of the ship, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, Who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no man could bind him, no not with chains…And always, night and day, he was in the mountains and in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones.” This woman has her dwelling among the tombs - her son barely seems to exist to her except in his death; she obsesses on it day and night, and instead of getting better, she seems to be getting worse. It’s like watching someone demented gouging holes in herself. You said yourself that suffering does not always purify; it seems to me this woman has been broken inside, and the inner emptiness has been filled by evil. She’s never going to get better as long as she’s being cheered on by bystanders.
August 11th, 2005 at 12:45 pm
THE CINDY SHEEHAN BANDWAGON
Anti-war activists and far-left organizations have been galvanized by Cindy Sheehan’s continuing protest outside President Bush’s Crawford, Texas, ranch. MoveOn.org has hopped on the bandwagon with a newspaper ad and Internet campaign. Air America ho…
August 11th, 2005 at 1:05 pm
Mrs. Sheehan
Like the 9/11 families, it is unsurprising that some people would use the death of a loved one to acquire a forum for their political views. The only moderately unusual thing is the antiwar bias of the MSM who glorify…
August 11th, 2005 at 1:31 pm
Your son Buster offers an interpretation of Sheehan’s 180 degree turn in protesting the war and the Bush presidency which is entirely plausible. Makes sense to me. If he plays baseball as well as he opines, he may make the Major Leagues!
August 11th, 2005 at 1:56 pm
MSM Spinning for Sheehan
Cindy Sheehan is mostly being portrayed in the MSM as a lone grieving mother looking for answers about her sons death from the president who “caused” it. But that is not an accurate portrayal of the situation. Patterico details an exampl…
August 11th, 2005 at 2:07 pm
[...] The Anchoress has more. A lot more. [...]
August 11th, 2005 at 2:20 pm
Good post. It seems as of Ms Sheehan’s credibiliy is slipping- and given that she was given a rather large pass, due to her grief, says a lot.
In three weeks this will all be forgotten, or certainly on a back burner. I wonder how many of Ms Sheehan’s new friends will still be around, as she vaccums and prepares dinner- alone, with the memories of her son.
Those that celebrated her sons life and committment to country and freedom, will still honor his sacrifice.
The rest never reallt cared to begin with.
August 11th, 2005 at 8:47 pm
As someone who has lost a kid, although not by war, the one thing I have learned in how one reacts to their loss, is everyone reacts differently. I sometimes wonder if there is anything more painful than losing your own child.
-
On the subject of war. It is becoming more apparent to me that we are losing the war all because the Bush team miscalculated big time. The fact that terrorism is world wide proves to me that getting our way in Iraq will not stop terrorism around the world as was proven in London and in Egypt. We are in a mess and the Bush administration unfortunately does not get it. Just in my most humble opinion, Dear Anchoress
August 11th, 2005 at 9:03 pm
Lyle -
Yes, it seems very clear, now, from what I have been linking too, that 9/11 was meant to be a “GLOBAL” day of terror…it IS a mess, but Bush is trying to do something about it, as opposed to nothing being done - by any country except maybe Israel - before. It’s messy, it’s ugly, I wish it were not happening. I do not think that we are losing the war…but I will ask you to consider that if we ARE…how much of it is due to miscalculation, and how much of it is due to the press and members of the opposition party sending a continual message of defeat and non support for US policies. That stuff DOES matter. It emboldens the enemy and encourages to keep at it.
But…if you read the milblogs and other sources, the military does not feel we are losing. And you know…I trust them to know about that better than us armchair generals!
As far as Mrs. Sheehan is concerned, I don’t know how I can write about her with more compassion or fairness, I hope you will agree about that. I DO understand that she is grieving. I still think she’s also being exploited.
August 12th, 2005 at 12:01 am
And I didn’t even know we are losing the war…How do you like that. I thought we were fighting them there so we don’t have to fight them here. And I thought our exit strategy was the same it always was–victory.
The Brits should have given up in WWII after Dunkirk…or at least when the first bomb fell on London! We should have called it quits after the Philippines…heck, after our first military training exercise death!
Yep, listen to the Left…they don’t lie. Or maybe they never tell the truth. They report. You decide. Yep, George W. Bush could not stop one Islamofascist cell in London and one in Egypt from setting off bombs (made with household chemicals in the London case). Well then. He should have said that the War on Terror was going to be a long one,unlike other conventional wars, maybe decades in length, with no definitive benchmarks of success until it is won. Wait. He did. The Left on the other hand, kept putting the idiots back on the street in London and Europe. Let’s listen to them!
August 12th, 2005 at 2:13 pm
[...] The Anchoress ยป The Company She Keeps [...]