Same protest, different results

By Mouser the King Cat

Remember Cindy Sheehan? The media couldn’t get enough of her in 2005 when she slept in a pup tent three miles outside George W. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, protesting the Iraq War, in which her son Casey died.

Actors, singers and civil rights types dropped in, knowing cameras would follow. She was called “the Rosa Parks of the anti-war movement.” Her peace tour of 42 cities in 26 states gained international attention. She wrote books and was arrested for demonstrating in front of the White House.

 In 2008, things changed. Ms. Sheehan ran against liberal deity Nancy Pelosi for Congress, finishing second in a seven-candidate Democratic primary. After President Obama was sworn in, January 2009, Ms. Sheehan continued her anti-war protests. Not surprisingly, the microphones and notepads disappeared; talk about a Hollywood biopic evaporated overnight.

Charles Gibson anchored ABC’s “World News Tonight” at the time and got caught confirming the intellectual dishonesty of the Washington press corps, telling a radio show:  

“It’s such a sad story. Martha Raddatz [of ABC News] wrote aterrific book about one battle that took place in Iraq, and it was the battlein which Cindy’s son was killed. And you look at somebody like that and youthink here’s somebody who’s just trying to find some meaning in her son’sdeath. And you have to be sympathetic to her. Anybody who has given a son tothis country has made an enormous sacrifice, and you have to be sympathetic. Butenough already.”

To me, this proves that anti-war protests are really anti-Republican protests, and always have been since the days of Nixon. Perhaps the likeable Ms. Sheehan will make a comeback. That could happen the next time there is a GOP president – and not one minute before.