But her actions do seem so stuntlike; I suppose because to me it isn't as though she's drawing attention to a secret, hidden problem (like an MIA son that she can't get an answer about, or something). It feels very manufactured even though I am sure it isn't.
No one really doubts that this is stunt-like. And if anyone else with access to the President (like, oh, the major media or our frigging Party leaders) would press him consistently on this, she might well be viewed as an (understandable) crank.
But there really is no one else, and she's managed to draw some attention to a pretty obvious set of questions that the President ought to be forced to respond to. I think people are just impressed that she managed that, and they can sort of believe that losing your son might drive greater efforts than one would otherwise be capable of.
She is performing a publicity stunt. It is sad that it takes such a thing to ask some valid questions of the president. Someday the slime machine will go too far and enough people will identify with the victim and will realize "that could be me they go after."
In the meantime we all play Junior High and keep our heads down so the bully won't target us.
I'd say Ms. Sheehan, unlike the Dems' stable of message muckety mucks, has a fantastic grasp of kairos:
"Spending time outside Washington gives the president a fresh perspective of what's on the minds of the American people," press secretary Scott McClellan exclaimed earlier this month. "It's a time, really, for him to shed the coat and tie and meet with folks out in the heartland and hear what's on their minds."
I second what apostropher says. Look, it would be a bigger stunt if she knew she could get an answer, or if she knew the answer already. Sure she's trying to draw attention to the issue, and if nobody else has, why not her?
What I think people have a problem with (those who have a protest with how she is protesting, not whom or what) is how staged it seems. That makes it unlike rosa parks. I suppose thats what FL means by political theater. I don't know enough of how the protest was started (was it just Ms. Sheehan herself, before the press got there?) to say whether it is truly staged.
Standing near his red pickup truck, an American flag in its bed held up by a beer carton, ranch owner Larry Mattlage made his feelings loud and clear Sunday by firing a rifle in the air during a prayer vigil held by Sheehan's supporters.
After Secret Service agents and McLennan County sheriff deputies responded and talked with him, Mattlage re-emerged from his property to air his grievances.
"At first I was sympathetic (with Sheehan), but they've been here a week," he said, standing behind his front gate and talking to a group of television cameras. "But it's like company - if you have your brother-in-law visiting, he starts stinking after a while."
... the bearded Mattlage, whose ranch is near Bush's, said he has never met the president but that he loves him anyway because the "good book says to love a neighbor."
Asked if he loved his new neighbors, Mattlage said: "I loved them for a week." (Read More)
right, but this protest purports to be something else in addition, namely, "an attempt to get answers." It's cheap symbolism, just as Moore's attempts to meet Roger Smith were. I agree with what I take to be her larger point, but I still find the whole thing annoying, and I'm further annoyed that this is what it takes.
tweedledopey, the rosa parks thing was staged, too. she didn't just up one day and decide she was tired of sitting at the back of the bus. she was deliberately chosen to start the montgomery bus boycott because she was involved in the movement, young, professional, and could be counted on to stick with her position in the face of adversity or whatever.
when you are trying to make a political point, it's a pretty good idea to plan beforehand, it tends to make your point clearer and more well-received. most of the civil rights cases were "test" cases, that is, people deliberately testing or flouting suspect policy in order to bring the issue to the courts. with something as delicate as litigation, you want to make sure you have the best candidate possible, and it's much easier to pick one before the incident happens rather than looking around for someone who's already been affected.
i don't see what the big problem with the cindy sheehan thing is. she's a real mother of a dead soldier, her grief is real, and she's truly pissed off at the president and the war. unless her sentiments are inauthentic, what's so staged about it?
I guess that it just doesn't strike me of an issue that needs attention drawing to because it seems to be fairly well covered already (is there anyone unaware of the problems with Iraq who would be convinced by this?); or, one that would be better served by a lot of moms marching on Washington, which while staged, would make the point better?
The power of it (and I'm not really sure that it works, but if it does, this is how it does) is that Bush presents himself as personally decent, and respectful, and concerned, and appreciative of the sacrifices made by soldiers on an individual level, and generally as a Red State-type good man. Ignoring a march is one thing, anyone can do that, but someone with Bush's persona is supposed to be solicitous and respectful of a grieving mother even if she's being irrational and unfair to him. The idea is to put him in a fork -- either he comes out and gives her the 'answers' she wants, or he forfeits his decent guy credibility. Bush's strategy is to turn her into a march -- an explicitly political event -- rather than a grieving individual who is entitled to respect, and then to ignore her because it's just politics.
Went to Google News to find a story that stated exactly what Sheehan's demands were. Boy, it sure blows donkeys, doesn't it? Can we get a "no opinion pieces" filter? What the fuck is RedState.org doing there?
Cala, by that rule, when isn't it a political event? Where else could she go to try and "get answers" and not have it be a political event? Or is it by necessity a political event to call out one's elected leader?
17: But it doesn't look like one, or isn't presented as one.
I think also the small-scale nature of this works in its favor. At big marches you'll have Some Guy With A Sign saying something offensive, at least. (This may be connected with the Billmon piece apo links, where he connects the cratering support for the war with the lack of an anti-war movement.) Here it's the right wing that's doing most of the seriously untelegenic stuff. Sheehan and her friends may not be as politic as we'd like--I wish she wouldn't talk about Israel--but spreading the protest out gives the righties much more opportunity to shoot themselves in the foot. Something this dumb takes planning.
(Speaking of which--the neighbor who shot a gun into the air and said he was getting ready for "dove season"--how is that not a threat?)
It is a political event, but she is also a real bereaved mother of a soldier. A stand-up guy of the type Bush presents himself as would give a bereaved mother personal attention and respect even if she was going to use it against him. To win this on the looks of it, he has to make her actions only political, not personal as well.
I think the best response would have been one which acknowledged or alluded to the possibility of a "yo mama"ish response, without actually making it—it would have to stand on its other merits as well, of course.
Ogged sets jokes up, he doesn't make them.
What ogged's made of his life is sort of a joke, isn't it?
I think the best response would have been one which acknowledged or alluded to the possibility of a "yo mama"ish response, without actually making it
That's right. Given our sports discussion, the implication that I was the donkey-blowing expert was implicit in 26. A skillful joke would have done more than merely make it explicit.
I have no idea what the rest of your comment could possibly mean.
t's the same annoying schtick that Michael Moore used in Roger and Me and on his TV show; its effectiveness depends on your view of the obligations of people with a lot of responsibility to drop what they're doing to meet with some disgruntled person waiting to grind an axe./i>
But Bush is napping, bike riding, going to little league games, "reading," ect...It's not as if meeting with Sheehan would cause him to miss something important.
It's an interesting question whether Sheehan sincerely think Bush has an answer to give. I haven't been following closely, but I suspect not, and so you have a point. Sheehan's purpose is to call attention to the fact that Bush doesn't have an answer to give. Maybe she'd be happy with Tom Delay's?
Other End-Timers are more interested in forcing the issue--they're convinced that the way to coax the Lord back to earth is to "Christianize" our nation and then the world. Consider House Majority Leader Tom Delay. At church one day he listened as the pastor, urging his flock to support the administration, declared that "the war between America and Iraq is the gateway to the Apocalypse." Delay rose to speak, not only to the congregation but to 225 Christian TV and radio stations. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "what has been spoken here tonight is the truth of God."
Just as you say, Fontana. Anybody who's been consistently against cheap theater, in favor of honest communication between the government and its citizens, who has standards of discourse and sticks to them--if they want to complain about Sheehan, fine, I'll listen. I'll even agree that Sheehan's camp isn't exactly full of richly complex criticisms of the war, and that it's all a stunt, cheap theatrics. Since virtually no strong advocates of the war are even minimally consistent in the standards of political discourse they observe and defend, there's almost no one worth listening to or agreeing with in this sense.
I'm just so fucking sick of people bitching about some standard or norm that they consistently trespass against or endorse trespassing against, whatever the hell their political loyalties might be. I think I'm especially sick of it from defenders of the war, however, given that they've got nothing to complain about in terms of getting everything they want from the political leadership. The loudmouths of the contemporary populist right are the biggest bunch of crybabies and gutless pussies I've ever seen: so scared of the messiness of reality in the wider world that they'd rather curl up in a fetal ball with their thumbs in their mouth and whine about Michael Moore or whatever weak-ass polemicist is tinkling on their ankles this week.
I think it is unfair that in order to adequately ridicule this article I would be forced to read this article. Can't we just stipulate that there is something worth ridiculing in this article. I don't think it would be healthy for me to read it.
So did you guys see this item about a guy on a neighboring ranch getting within a hundred feet of the protesters and firing off a shotgun? That's nutty even for Bumfuck, Texas.
Billmon.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 8:09 AM
But her actions do seem so stuntlike; I suppose because to me it isn't as though she's drawing attention to a secret, hidden problem (like an MIA son that she can't get an answer about, or something). It feels very manufactured even though I am sure it isn't.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 8:29 AM
No one really doubts that this is stunt-like. And if anyone else with access to the President (like, oh, the major media or our frigging Party leaders) would press him consistently on this, she might well be viewed as an (understandable) crank.
But there really is no one else, and she's managed to draw some attention to a pretty obvious set of questions that the President ought to be forced to respond to. I think people are just impressed that she managed that, and they can sort of believe that losing your son might drive greater efforts than one would otherwise be capable of.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 8:47 AM
She is performing a publicity stunt. It is sad that it takes such a thing to ask some valid questions of the president. Someday the slime machine will go too far and enough people will identify with the victim and will realize "that could be me they go after."
In the meantime we all play Junior High and keep our heads down so the bully won't target us.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 8:54 AM
What protest isn't stunt-like, though? The point of protest is to draw attention to an issue.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 8:55 AM
I'd say Ms. Sheehan, unlike the Dems' stable of message muckety mucks, has a fantastic grasp of kairos:
Posted by Andy Vance | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 9:11 AM
I second what apostropher says. Look, it would be a bigger stunt if she knew she could get an answer, or if she knew the answer already. Sure she's trying to draw attention to the issue, and if nobody else has, why not her?
What I think people have a problem with (those who have a protest with how she is protesting, not whom or what) is how staged it seems. That makes it unlike rosa parks. I suppose thats what FL means by political theater. I don't know enough of how the protest was started (was it just Ms. Sheehan herself, before the press got there?) to say whether it is truly staged.
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 9:15 AM
Also,
Posted by Sam K | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 9:45 AM
A,
right, but this protest purports to be something else in addition, namely, "an attempt to get answers." It's cheap symbolism, just as Moore's attempts to meet Roger Smith were. I agree with what I take to be her larger point, but I still find the whole thing annoying, and I'm further annoyed that this is what it takes.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 9:50 AM
FL,
if she got her answers and went away, would you feel different? i mean, what if that were/is all she were/is after?
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 10:02 AM
tweedledopey, the rosa parks thing was staged, too. she didn't just up one day and decide she was tired of sitting at the back of the bus. she was deliberately chosen to start the montgomery bus boycott because she was involved in the movement, young, professional, and could be counted on to stick with her position in the face of adversity or whatever.
when you are trying to make a political point, it's a pretty good idea to plan beforehand, it tends to make your point clearer and more well-received. most of the civil rights cases were "test" cases, that is, people deliberately testing or flouting suspect policy in order to bring the issue to the courts. with something as delicate as litigation, you want to make sure you have the best candidate possible, and it's much easier to pick one before the incident happens rather than looking around for someone who's already been affected.
i don't see what the big problem with the cindy sheehan thing is. she's a real mother of a dead soldier, her grief is real, and she's truly pissed off at the president and the war. unless her sentiments are inauthentic, what's so staged about it?
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 10:09 AM
[redacted]
Posted by [redacted] | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 10:12 AM
I guess that it just doesn't strike me of an issue that needs attention drawing to because it seems to be fairly well covered already (is there anyone unaware of the problems with Iraq who would be convinced by this?); or, one that would be better served by a lot of moms marching on Washington, which while staged, would make the point better?
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 10:13 AM
The power of it (and I'm not really sure that it works, but if it does, this is how it does) is that Bush presents himself as personally decent, and respectful, and concerned, and appreciative of the sacrifices made by soldiers on an individual level, and generally as a Red State-type good man. Ignoring a march is one thing, anyone can do that, but someone with Bush's persona is supposed to be solicitous and respectful of a grieving mother even if she's being irrational and unfair to him. The idea is to put him in a fork -- either he comes out and gives her the 'answers' she wants, or he forfeits his decent guy credibility. Bush's strategy is to turn her into a march -- an explicitly political event -- rather than a grieving individual who is entitled to respect, and then to ignore her because it's just politics.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 10:27 AM
Went to Google News to find a story that stated exactly what Sheehan's demands were. Boy, it sure blows donkeys, doesn't it? Can we get a "no opinion pieces" filter? What the fuck is RedState.org doing there?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 10:30 AM
That's really well-put, LB.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 10:35 AM
But... if you camp out on a politician's lawn to ask him a question, doesn't that automatically make it a political event?
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 10:43 AM
Cala:
I'm not sure who you're arguing with. Hasn't everyone here said something along the lines of, "It's stunt-like," or "It's a political event"?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 10:49 AM
Cala, by that rule, when isn't it a political event? Where else could she go to try and "get answers" and not have it be a political event? Or is it by necessity a political event to call out one's elected leader?
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 10:50 AM
17: But it doesn't look like one, or isn't presented as one.
I think also the small-scale nature of this works in its favor. At big marches you'll have Some Guy With A Sign saying something offensive, at least. (This may be connected with the Billmon piece apo links, where he connects the cratering support for the war with the lack of an anti-war movement.) Here it's the right wing that's doing most of the seriously untelegenic stuff. Sheehan and her friends may not be as politic as we'd like--I wish she wouldn't talk about Israel--but spreading the protest out gives the righties much more opportunity to shoot themselves in the foot. Something this dumb takes planning.
(Speaking of which--the neighbor who shot a gun into the air and said he was getting ready for "dove season"--how is that not a threat?)
Um, not being coherent. What 14 and 16 said.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 10:51 AM
I take it Cala is referring to LB's saying that if it were a march it would be "an explicitly political event."
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 10:52 AM
It is a political event, but she is also a real bereaved mother of a soldier. A stand-up guy of the type Bush presents himself as would give a bereaved mother personal attention and respect even if she was going to use it against him. To win this on the looks of it, he has to make her actions only political, not personal as well.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 11:00 AM
I'm a little disappointed that no one is picking up the "Google News blows donkeys" theme.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 11:07 AM
I thought you didn't like Google News.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 11:08 AM
Oh come on.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 11:14 AM
Don't comment about donkey-blowing, Ben.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 11:15 AM
You're right, I should leave it to the experts. z.B. YOUR MOM.
Oh burn. I just totally burned you, ogged.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 11:17 AM
With a beautiful setup like 26, I really expected something more artful.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 11:19 AM
I'm merely pretending to insult you poorly. Come on, let's engage in a mutual game of make-believe! I'll start.
Tom Sawyer attended his own funeral.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 11:21 AM
28 was pretty lame, Ogged.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 11:22 AM
28 was pretty lame, Ogged
?! 28 was in earnest. There was a lot to work with there, and he just came back with "yo mama."
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 11:23 AM
How would you have done it, ogged?
"Don't comment about donkey-blowing, ogged."
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 11:25 AM
It was a good "yo mama." Sometimes simple is effective.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 11:25 AM
The moment has passed, Ben, it would be like explaining a joke.
Matt, I'm afraid we differ.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 11:27 AM
This is sorta kinda interesting: Watching Sheehan and the Bush PR machine wrestle for mindshare in Yahoo News photos.
Posted by Andy Vance | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 11:27 AM
On the other hand, it was a sufficiently obvious "yo mama" that it really could have been left implicit. I have conflicted feelings on this matter.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 11:28 AM
Helps that it was a stock Wolfson move. With that we agree to differ.
Ben, that wasn't fair. Ogged sets jokes up, he doesn't make them.
Posted by Matt Weinere | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 11:29 AM
Dammit! I hate when I mistype my name.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 11:30 AM
Der wienere Matt,
I think the best response would have been one which acknowledged or alluded to the possibility of a "yo mama"ish response, without actually making it—it would have to stand on its other merits as well, of course.
Ogged sets jokes up, he doesn't make them.
What ogged's made of his life is sort of a joke, isn't it?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 11:34 AM
Here is someone else who is probably not to happy with Cindy Sheehan.
Posted by Joe O | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 11:38 AM
I think the best response would have been one which acknowledged or alluded to the possibility of a "yo mama"ish response, without actually making it
That's right. Given our sports discussion, the implication that I was the donkey-blowing expert was implicit in 26. A skillful joke would have done more than merely make it explicit.
I have no idea what the rest of your comment could possibly mean.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 11:38 AM
"Stand on its own merits" was unclear?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 11:45 AM
own -> other. Time to leave the playground.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 11:45 AM
If you read to the end of Joe O's link, you get this gem:
Sweet.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 12:05 PM
Everytime one of you guys links to those election-era posts it makes me want to cry / throw up.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 12:17 PM
You might think about a career in comedy.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 12:18 PM
Why, do you want to cry / throw up now too?
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 12:31 PM
A sign of a successful comedian!
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 12:36 PM
Surely the Sheehan campsite protest is political theater, as opposed to, say, an earnest attempt to rearrange the president's dayplanner.
A is x and not y, because y is an impossibility?
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 12:44 PM
t's the same annoying schtick that Michael Moore used in Roger and Me and on his TV show; its effectiveness depends on your view of the obligations of people with a lot of responsibility to drop what they're doing to meet with some disgruntled person waiting to grind an axe./i>
But Bush is napping, bike riding, going to little league games, "reading," ect...It's not as if meeting with Sheehan would cause him to miss something important.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 12:49 PM
[redacted]
Posted by [redacted] | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 12:52 PM
It's an interesting question whether Sheehan sincerely think Bush has an answer to give. I haven't been following closely, but I suspect not, and so you have a point. Sheehan's purpose is to call attention to the fact that Bush doesn't have an answer to give. Maybe she'd be happy with Tom Delay's?
Other End-Timers are more interested in forcing the issue--they're convinced that the way to coax the Lord back to earth is to "Christianize" our nation and then the world. Consider House Majority Leader Tom Delay. At church one day he listened as the pastor, urging his flock to support the administration, declared that "the war between America and Iraq is the gateway to the Apocalypse." Delay rose to speak, not only to the congregation but to 225 Christian TV and radio stations. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "what has been spoken here tonight is the truth of God."
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 2:34 PM
Just as you say, Fontana. Anybody who's been consistently against cheap theater, in favor of honest communication between the government and its citizens, who has standards of discourse and sticks to them--if they want to complain about Sheehan, fine, I'll listen. I'll even agree that Sheehan's camp isn't exactly full of richly complex criticisms of the war, and that it's all a stunt, cheap theatrics. Since virtually no strong advocates of the war are even minimally consistent in the standards of political discourse they observe and defend, there's almost no one worth listening to or agreeing with in this sense.
I'm just so fucking sick of people bitching about some standard or norm that they consistently trespass against or endorse trespassing against, whatever the hell their political loyalties might be. I think I'm especially sick of it from defenders of the war, however, given that they've got nothing to complain about in terms of getting everything they want from the political leadership. The loudmouths of the contemporary populist right are the biggest bunch of crybabies and gutless pussies I've ever seen: so scared of the messiness of reality in the wider world that they'd rather curl up in a fetal ball with their thumbs in their mouth and whine about Michael Moore or whatever weak-ass polemicist is tinkling on their ankles this week.
Posted by Timothy Burke | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 2:58 PM
Cindy Sheehan's Sinister Piffle:
What's wrong with her Crawford protest.
Christopher Hitchens
fighting words, Aug. 15, 2005, 11:50 AM PT
I think it is unfair that in order to adequately ridicule this article I would be forced to read this article. Can't we just stipulate that there is something worth ridiculing in this article. I don't think it would be healthy for me to read it.
Posted by Joe O | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 7:33 PM
I really don't like Hitchens, but this wasn't so bad.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 7:37 PM
So says Kaus's pet.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 8:02 PM
Kaus rocks my world. Remember that Kaus helped write part of my personal ad.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 8:07 PM
So did you guys see this item about a guy on a neighboring ranch getting within a hundred feet of the protesters and firing off a shotgun? That's nutty even for Bumfuck, Texas.
Posted by Kriston | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 8:16 PM
Speaking of shocking, I'm sorta surprised my 52 didn't catalyze a single comment. Is this old nooz?
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 8:18 PM
Way OT, but on the Daily Show tonight:
Texas Scold 'Em.
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 9:04 PM
or rather, not way ot.
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 08-15-05 9:04 PM