August 16, 2005
MSM wringing the last drops out of "grieving mom" story...
Thanks to the beautiful thing that is the internet (as well as talk radio), the Main Stream Media is learning that they can only ride this story until it runs out of gas - and the "E" warning light is beginning to flash.
George Neumayr in The American Spectator sums it up well:
That little tick-tock sound you hear is the final seconds winding down on Ms. Sheehan's 15 minutes of fame.What the media are interested in is Sheehan's politics, and the window of that interest will close for good once the public learns of her ambitiously radical views -- that Bush should be impeached as a war criminal, that America is an abomination not worth defending against terrorists, and so forth. In the end, the media will probably have added to her grief once they take away from her the new life of celebrity activism they have encouraged her to pursue in the absence of the life of her son.
Sheehan doesn't speak for war widows and grieving moms any more than the Jersey Girls spoke for all relatives of 9-11 victims. And like them, Sheehan hasn't crafted her case very carefully or modestly. Just as the Jersey Girls acted as though their grief somehow made them experts on rearranging the CIA and entitled them to harangue Condi Rice, so Sheehan is making outrageous demands upon the military's commander in chief -- demands only possible in a democracy in which a fatuous media can get its leaders, who are supposed to be thinking about the common good, entangled in all sorts of absurd and superficial controversies.
Cross-posted at Ex-Donkey Blog
UPDATE: 2:06pm
Is it me? Or do these quotes sound a little too "chipper" for a grieving mother? And this is very telling:
"I have discovered that the White House press corps is always looking for something to do and someone to cover. We have been happy to oblige them..."Posted by Gary at August 16, 2005 08:50 AM | TrackBack
Or perhaps she speaks with real street cred for an increasingly discontent population (which according to the polls is now the majority of Americans) that feels the war is not worth it. Many people may be willing to ignore some of Sheehan's political positions because they agree with the big one. Much like people that voted for Bush even though they don't agree with much of his politics.
She seems to have the administration twisting in the wind...
The polls don't say that a majority of people think "the war is not worth it". If you actually look at the questions and answers, at most they reflect an impatience for finishing up the job. But the same polls also show that most people are in favor of finishing up the job. Because, unlike yourself, they understand that not doing so would in fact make it "not worth it" and doing so would mean that Casey Sheehan and the other two thousand casualties will have died in vain.
The administration is not "twisting in the wind", however. That is wishful thinking on your part. Fortunately we have a President that doesn't govern by polls. They are doing their jobs. Bush does more in a day out of Crawford that Bill Clinton ever did in a week at Martha's Vineyard. Cindy Sheehan has the MSM all in a flutter - not to mention the Moron.org crowd. And she certainly doesn't represent the vast majority of military families who've lost loved ones over the last two years. You don't exactly see the media tripping over themselves to interview them do you? I didn't think so.
I rest my case about polls: http://newsbusters.org/node/287
Posted by: Gary at August 16, 2005 01:44 PMI'm not sure I would use the factually challenged Rush as definitive proof of anything. Here is the poll question I am referring to and the results:
In view of the developments since we first sent our troops to Iraq, do you think the United States made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq, or not?
Mistake: 54%, Not mistake: 44%, No opinion: 2%
Looking at the same question since the poll started in 2003, there is quite a bit of bounce back and forth, but the moving window average is trending strongly towards mistake, not the other way around. This doesn’t suggest a frustration about the progress, but a regret that action was ever taken. I will change my comment from “not worth it” to “shouldn’t have ever done it”. How we deal with the issue, should be a genuine topic of debate, but more and more people are blaming the current administration for getting us into this mess in the first place…
Poll link: http://www.usatoday.com/news/polls/2005-08-08-august-poll.htm#iraq
Posted by: LB buddy at August 17, 2005 01:54 PM
