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Announcement :: Protest Activity |
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The Smearing of Cindy Sheehan |
Current rating: 0 |
by Anthony DiMaggio
Email: ardimag (nospam) ilstu.edu (unverified!) |
28 Aug 2005
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this commentary analyzes the corporate media's treatment of Cindy Sheehan. |
There’s no denying it, Cindy Sheehan has become the most important symbol of the anti-war movement these days. The mother of an army specialist who was killed in Iraq, Cindy is a nightmare come-true for the Bush administration. Her pain and anguish are difficult to discount. Still, this hasn’t stopped right-wing pundits from trying. For those who have been living under a rock the last few weeks, I’ll elaborate on Cindy Sheehan’s story. After her son Casey was killed, Cindy, along with a number of parents who lost their children in Iraq, had a chance to meet with President Bush in 2004. Unfulfilled after her discussion with Bush, Cindy has dedicated the month of August to protesting the Iraq war outside of Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. Her protest gained nationwide media attention, as she vowed to camp outside of Bush’s ranch until the President agreed to meet with her. With President Bush’s vacation coming to a close, Cindy has re-channeled her anti-war efforts into a bus tour that will head to Washington D.C. where she plans to lobby members of Congress such as Tom Delay (R) for an immediate and complete withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.
President Bush is reluctant to meet with Cindy face-to-face. His squeemishness toward the troops and their families reaches much further than Cindy, however. As of the summer of 2005, he has yet to attend a single funeral of an American soldier killed in Iraq. Bush’s refusal to meet with Cindy has only energized the anti-war movement. Over a hundred supporters have gathered at what is now deemed “Camp Casey,” outside of Bush’s Crawford ranch, in an encouraging sign of solidarity with the families of those killed in the Iraq war. Cindy is a vital figure for many throughout the nation as well, as her story shows that one can support the troops by advocating a withdrawal from Iraq.
Ardently pro-war since the inception of the Iraq war, the corporate media has taken great strides to silence serious anti-war critics like Cindy. Fred Barnes of Fox News labeled her a “crackpot,” while Rush Limbaugh claimed, inaccurately, that her “story is nothing more than forged documents…there’s nothing about it that’s real.” Exactly what “documents” Limbaugh was referring to was left up to the imagination, or lack thereof, of his ditto head viewers. One of the most popular attacks against Cindy has been to label her as a pawn of the anti-war movement. On Fox News, Bill O’Reilly characterized Cindy as “in bed with the radical left,” while William F. Buckley of the conservative National Review condemned her as “the mouthpiece…of howling at the moon, bile spewing Bush haters.”
Increasingly, even “supporters” of Cindy in the mainstream media have resorted to backhanded compliments. These “supporters” sympathize with Cindy while attempting to chop out the legs of the anti-war movement. Farhad Marjoo of Salon.com claims that “the antiwar movement was dominated by lefties, and ineffective – until a grieving mother from California became its symbol.” Marjoo’s discounting of the anti-war movement as fringe-based is largely inappropriate here, considering that since 2004, public support for the Iraq war scarcely broke more than half the American public. Frank Rich of the New York Times attacks “the opportunistic left wing groups that have attached themselves to her like barnacles,” while Leonard Pitts Jr. of the Miami Herald states that, “Sheehan has one quality most protestors lack: moral authority.” Pitt’s position makes one wonder whether the parents and relatives of those currently serving in Iraq lack the “moral authority” to protest the war until their children die in combat.
The media’s efforts to separate Cindy from her supporters are intended to marginalize the very anti-war movement Cindy is trying to mobilize. Well aware of this, Cindy refutes claims that she is being victimized or used by the anti-war movement, explaining: “the media are wrong. The people who have come out to Camp Casey to help coordinate the press and events with me are not putting words in my mouth, they are taking words out of my mouth.”
The media’s implied argument that it’s acceptable for grieving parents like Cindy to protest the war, but not for those who haven’t lost children should be entirely rejected. Implying that it’s acceptable for one mother to dissent, but that others cannot sympathize with and work with her is a recipe for neutering a broad-based anti-war movement. Then again, this is obviously the goal of those who attack Cindy and anti-war protest groups. As the United States reaches a “tipping point” where the majority of the American public begins to oppose the war, the desperate attacks of the pro-war media are likely to grow louder.
Former progressive Christopher Hitchens has spearheaded the crusade against the growing anti-war movement. Hitchens assails Cindy Sheehan for “spouting sinister piffle,” while largely failing to tackle her criticisms of the Bush administration for its pre-9/11 plans to dominate Middle Eastern oil and overthrow Saddam Hussein. After all, demonizing a traumatized mother is much easier if one systematically ignores their arguments in favor of hatefully labeling them as “pacifist” and “sinister.” In this sense, Hitchens has joined a long list of right-wing pundits who berate anti-war and progressive movements while lacking even an elementary understanding of the negative labels they choose to apply. Hitchen’s attack against Cindy Sheehan’s “cheerleader” Michael Moore for Moore’s alleged “spouting [of] fascistic nonsense” is reminiscent of Sean Hannity’s ill-conceived efforts to “win the war of liberty over liberalism” and Anne Coulter’s misguided campaign to expose Left wing or liberal “Slander” against the American Right. As Anne Coulter fails to understand that the written language cannot constitute a “slander” of the American Right (written attacks are known as “libel”), and as Sean Hannity does not understand that the history of “liberalism” as a system of political thought encompasses modern day liberal and conservative perspectives, so too does Christopher Hitchens fundamentally misapply the meaning of fascism. Fascism has traditionally been defined through governments that prioritize the state and the party over the individual person – through efforts to merge a repressive and totalitarian state with the corporate capitalist system. Under a dictatorship of the reactionary right and left, fascism typically relies on belligerent nationalism to stamp out meaningful debate and democratic consent. It is difficult to uncover, even on the most tangential level, how activists like Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan fit in under the context of this definition. As they lack any status as corporate or government leaders, and are only exercising their natural rights to dissent against government, these activists have nothing in common with fascists of modern history such as Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini. But then again, logic has never been a prerequisite for the media’s vilification of anti-war movements.
Regardless of the media’s smear campaign, the anti-war movement will continue to gain strength. Activists like Cindy Sheehan are instrumental in drawing attention to the brutality of the Iraq war – a brutality that has been long neglected by media outlets too afraid to show the bloody violence that has led to the deaths of over 1,800 American troops and up to 100,000 Iraqi civilians. In this respect, I am thankful that there are people like Cindy out there who are willing to take such an important step in breaking the corporate media’s stranglehold of propaganda in the war in Iraq. |
This work is in the public domain |
