United in their desire to cause change
James P. Pinkerton
Newsday
August 16, 2005
Two women, both of whom have lost children, are out to change government policy. Can they succeed? Should they succeed?
The two women are Beth Holloway Twitty and Cindy Sheehan. Twitty's daughter, Natalee Holloway, went missing in Aruba in May. Sheehan lost her son, Casey, in Iraq last year.
Both women have proved savvy in using the media. And, although we must sympathize with both, we must also consider the impact of their efforts on the institutions that have been created to deal with problems of law and war.
Twitty believes that Aruban authorities are not working energetically and competently to find out what happened to her daughter. In taking her case to the public, she has enlisted much of the media, particularly cable news. Yet, while many have criticized TV's infatuation with the Case of Yet Another Pretty White Girl, a deeper point needs to be remembered: the importance of victims' rights.
For decades, even as the crime rate soared, the legal and popular culture chose to dwell on the sympathetic side of criminals - that they, too, were victims of a racist and unjust society. Finally, law-abiding Middle America said, "Enough!" In the last two decades, tragic events have propelled such new figures as John "America's Most Wanted" Walsh into rightful prominence. Politicians have responded to this cultural shift by toughening laws, hiring more cops and increasing prison sentences.
Yet there's obviously still more work to be done. The recent case of Joseph Edward Duncan - charged with triple homicide and abduction of an 8-year-old girl - demonstrates that the revolving door still spins out of control. Duncan was legally deemed a sexual psychopath in 1980. Yet, for much of the last quarter-century, he has been out of jail, free to do who knows what. It's apparent that even today many officials still calculate that it's not really worth worrying about catching criminals and keeping them caught.
By this reckoning, the Natalie Holloway case should not be seen as the opportunity to exploit the memory of a telegenic blonde, but rather to change the lenient professional calculus of cops, judges and parole boards.
Cindy Sheehan, too, wishes to use the media for her cause, getting the United States out of Iraq. After stumping the country for months in obscurity, she hit upon a media-friendly stratagem. She camped outside George W. Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, where bored reporters were eager for a lively story.
It's Sheehan's right to protest, and most likely her efforts will increase opposition to the war; every movement, to be effective in the media age, needs a face. And now the anti-war movement has its face.
But it's worth pausing over the one specific request Sheehan has made: that the president meet with her to talk about Iraq.
Were Bush to do so, it would set a bad precedent. Without regard to the merits of this particular war, a president should not be media-blackmailed into such a meeting. During World War II, some 400,000 Americans were killed, and so should President Franklin D. Roosevelt have met with each one of those families?
In wartime, we need a commander in chief, not a consoler in chief or a debater in chief.
It's possible that Bush policies will be overturned at the ballot box in the coming elections. If so, that would be an example of the system responding legitimately to public pressure.
What connects Twitty and Sheehan is that they want to make change. What will validate their efforts permanently is if they make change that strengthens useful institutions as opposed to weakening them. That means forcing the criminal justice system to do its job, on the one hand, while leaving Bush and the electorate to do their jobs on the other.
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