Fact-Skewing and Hatemongering

I have a wild, and some would say irrational, fear of snakes. When I see one, I immediately start jumping up and down, trying to levitate while simultaneously stomping like a madman in hopes of crushing its little reptilian head. Mostly I find that levitation is difficult enough without integrating the piston-like stomping procedure. To the untrained eye it is usually indistinguishable from the operation known as "Screaming and Flailing Like a 12 Year-Old Girl." That's why only professionals should attempt it. So you can imagine my surprise when I realized that the political subculture known as The Extreme Right was endeavoring to use the same function on Cindy Sheehan.

She has decided to call into question America's reason for being in Iraq. She's been waiting outside President Bush's Crawford, Texas ranch, (where he is setting a record for number of vacation days taken by a U.S. president). She wants him to answer the question, "What is the noble cause Casey (her son, KIA in Iraq) died for?" Instead of answering said question, the Right's Usual Suspects have begun The Serpent Process.

Now, before all the knee-jerk apologists start yammering; think. Answer the question for yourself, in the privacy of your own head if you're afraid you'll look like a dissenter. Just what is the "Noble Cause" that all the soldiers and Marines are dying for? Be specific. No fair wrapping yourself in a flag and generalizing. "America", "Freedom" or even "Mom & Apple Pie" don't count. I doubt that even my Republican Mom would agree that she and her, albeit tasty, pie would be an acceptable reason to put Bin Laden on a back burner, declare war on a country that was no threat to us, lie about why we did so, and shrug off 1,825 + US military deaths.

What really bothers me is how The Usual Suspects have been trying to label Mrs. Sheehan a reptile and stomp on her head.

Bill O'Reilly has been getting a lot of flack about calling her actions treasonous, and so was very happy to point out that the NewYork Times printed a retraction of an article to that effect because he didn't actually use the phrase "Cindy Sheehan is treasonous." In actuality, what he said was "other families who view this behavior as bordering on treasonous" and implied like hell that this was the only view a sane individual could take.

Michelle Malkin said, "I can't imagine Army Spc. Casey Sheehan would stand for his mother's crazy accusations that he was murdered by his commander-in-chief, rather than the Iraqi terrorists who ambushed his convoy." I can't imagine where she gets the idea that she knows Mrs. Sheehan's son better than his mother. Personally, I'd come back from the dead and smack anyone who treated my mother the way the Neo Con/Compassionate Conservatives are treating this woman who dares to ask, here in the Land of the Free, why her son isn't coming home.

Dozens of right-wing talking heads and God-knows-how-many bloggers are screaming "Foul!" and crying out that she changed her mind about the war in general and Bush in particular. I'm not going to quote huge chunks of interviews and such, but you can take my word that I've read them all. I don't see any change in stance on her part. The main bit that everyone seems to be quoting has, not surprisingly, been taken out of context. But even if she did change her mind - so what? When did mental ossification become a virtue? As one blogger, Cenk Uygur, ironically pointed out, if the subject were Rosa Parks, The Usual Suspects would be yelling, "We have just found information that before Rosa Parks sat in the front of the bus, there were numerous times, she sat in the back of the bus! Ah ha! A flip-flopper!"

I have churned through dozens of blogs which revel in linking Cindy Sheehan with that Anti-Christ in snake's clothing, Michael Moore. Why he scares the Right so much would cover several articles itself. I'm not really crazy about the way the man goes about making his points, but losing one's mind every time his name is mentioned just because he seems to have stolen your modus operandi strikes me as pretty silly and childish. Just as many, if not more, love to label her a "tool of the radical left." If that's so, then how did they keep from calling Terry Schiavo's family "tools of the radical right". The Usual Suspects seem to have a very weak grasp of hypocrisy.

I found one blog which had this to say about her: "I find people like Cindy Sheehan and Kristin Breitweiser, who've parlayed the death of a loved one into 15 minutes of fame, to be more than a little bit ghoulish. Sheehan's son died over a year ago and Breitweiser's husband died on 9/11, yet they're still out publicly demanding attention and sympathy for their loss. Is there a time limit on their 'Get out of criticism free' card, or do they get to espouse their ridiculous anti-war views forever more without contradiction because someone close to them died?"

So what this rather less than compassionate conservative is saying is that A) it is disgusting to be against the war, especially if a loved one has died as a result, and B) they should be vigorously condemned. At the same time he implies that condemning the war, the way the war is run and/or President Bush in general is wrong and should not be allowed. Funny enough, the same people who rail against "political correctness" believe pretty strongly in shutting up anyone who doesn't agree with their politics.

It's all tacky and classless, (the bad kind), in the extreme. Of course, no one ever accused The Usual Suspects of being tasteful and classy. Perhaps something good might inadvertently come out of all this. Perhaps, just perhaps, the mainstream media will come out of hiding and do their jobs, like a fed-up lawyer addressing Senator McCarthy: "You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"