From Sioux directly, I think :>)
Tomlin the Rat
It Takes a Village to Smear Cindy Sheehan
By Arianna Huffington
The right wing attacks on Cindy Sheehan -- desperate, pathetic, and grasping
at straws -- expose much less about their target than about the attackers.
I mean, trying to slime a grieving Gold Star mom because she is
inconveniently questioning the reasons her son was sent off to die in Iraq? Why that would
be like trashing a much-decorated war hero or outing an undercover CIA
agent...
Oh, right…
How much longer can supporters of the Bush Administration get away with
mauling the very values they profess to stand for before their supporters start
getting wise to the fact that the only value they really value is power?
Think about it, they’ve shown absolutely no compunction about turning the
sleaze machine on an undercover agent who’d spent her career working to protect
us from weapons of mass destruction, a Silver Star/Purple Heart veteran who
volunteered to fight in a war the administration chickenhawks gamed the system to
avoid, and now the mother of a dead soldier.
The right wing smear machine whirrs on -- using its media mouthpieces to do
this dirtiest of dirty work. First it was the lie that Sheehan had, in the
words of Drudge, “dramatically changed her account” of her June 2004 meeting with
Bush. Despite the fact that this supposed flip-flop was a total distortion
created by taking quotes out of context, the story quickly made its way into the
hands of conservative bloggers… and allowed the TV jackal-pack to start
tearing away at Sheehan’s flesh. For all the details on how this went down, check
out Media Matters blow-by-blow description. The lowlights included Bill
O’Reilly and Michelle Malkin tag-teaming up to push the idea that Sheehan’s “story
hasn’t checked out”. O’Reilly also claimed Sheehan “is in bed with the
radical left”, and, later suggested “this kind of behavior borders on treasonous”…
and, for bad measure, tried to slime Sheehan by linking her with “people who
hate this government, hate their country”.
Rush Limbaugh played his usual role, parroting the flip-flop party line,
saying that Sheehan was “trying to pull a little bit of a swindle” and that
“she’d been totally co-opted by…the whole Michael Moore leftist mentality.” Fred
Barnes piled on, saying of Sheehan: “She’s a crackpot” (no doubt using the
same video-based diagnostic technique pioneered by Bill Frist). And Michelle
Malkin went all Patricia Arquette on the case, using her heretofore unpromoted
ESP powers to let us know that Sheehan’s dead son Casey wouldn’t approve of
“his mother’s crazy accusations”.
Beyond contempt. But I will say this for these sleazeballs: they are nothing
if not resilient. After the Cindy as Flip-Flopper story was revealed as a very
poorly done hatchet job, a second load of sludge was quickly dumped: the
ludicrous statement from the (ahem) “Sheehan Family” condemning Cindy’s
“political motivations and publicity tactics” (run under a banner headline proclaiming
“Family of Fallen Soldier Pleads: Please Stop, Cindy”).
Where do I start with this piece of manufactured offal? How about the fact
that no one put their names on the statement, which was “signed” by “Casey
Sheehan’s grandparents, aunts, uncles and numerous cousins”. Don’t these folks
have names? The only name attached to the “Sheehan Family” statement (delivered
to Drudge via email with permission “to distribute as you wish”) belongs to
Cherie Quartarolo who describes herself as Casey’s aunt and godmother. So did
I miss something? Since when does godmother outrank mother? What I really want
to know is: how does Casey’s second-cousin-twice-removed feel about Cindy’s
vigil? How about his ex-brother-in-law’s cleaning lady?
Cindy deals with all this very succinctly in her latest post, but suffice it
to say that Casey’s dad and their three other children are all supportive of
what Cindy is doing. Hmm… I always thought conservatives were big proponents of
the importance of the nuclear family. Does James Dobson know about this
attempt to undermine the primacy of a mother?
I guess it takes a village to trash a grieving Gold Star Mom.
© 2005 HuffingtonPost.com |
