Why I Love The Cunning Realist

by

by hilzoy

Because of this (about the smear campaign against Cindy Sheehan):

“There are so many side issues of shamelessness and crass opportunism in this story it makes my head spin. Think about the gall of a political and media machine “accusing” a private citizen of changing her mind (imagine that!) about an elected and supposedly accountable public official. When did a private citizen supposedly changing her opinion about something rise to the same level as a flip-flop about firing anyone involved in the leaking a CIA agent’s name? At what point did the ability to change one’s mind about a politician become something to be ridiculed and accused of instead of cherished as a basic right? And it’s not as if in the past year we haven’t learned anything about the pre-war manipulation of intelligence, as well as the incompetent planning, that resulted in the death of Cindy Sheehan’s son and thousands of others like him.

Something else about this story that infuriates me is the vision of feckless, smarmy smearsters and cowards hiding behind keyboards in cities like Washington and New York (and yes, Miami), punching out electronic missives in a pathetic and desperate attempt to impugn the integrity of a woman sitting in the dust and August heat of Texas—a woman who, along with her dead son, embodies everything that’s right about this country. The growing division between the professional class of spinning punditry and the vast expanse of Middle America that actually does the working, the fighting and the dying so the pundits can spend their time chattering has never been more clear than with this story.

If I had lost a parent, child or sibling in Iraq, I’d be right next to Cindy Sheehan sitting in that dust and heat. And I wouldn’t budge until the president—ensconced within that reassuring bubble of faith, brush-clearing and mountain bike-riding—found a few moments to come listen to me. I hope as many people as possible join her protest and offer her food, water, and whatever legal or media assistance she may need.”

He’s absolutely right. I’m in the middle of another, somewhat different, post on this, but: criticizing Cindy Sheehan on factual grounds is one thing; but the rush to smear her is just ugly and wrong. People who care about moral values ought to consider that they don’t just involve embryos and one’s choice of sexual partners; they involve trying to be decent, honorable, and generous to everyone, whether they agree with you politically or not. People who forget about decency as soon as a political argument gets started show, by their actions, that decency was not that important to them to start with; that when push comes to shove, actual people are less important to them than scoring political points. This is a repellent attitude.

If anyone is tempted to say that she asked for it by deciding to go to Crawford, think before you make this argument. It is true that, politics being what it is, she should not have been surprised by being smeared, any more than a black man who didn’t get off the sidewalk to make way for a white man in 1950s Birmingham should have been surprised by being beaten up, or an American soldier on patrol should be surprised by an IED. But the fact that something is unsurprising does not make it right.

Also: if Michelle Malkin and the always reliable Leon H feel so confident of their ability to speak for the dead, they should consider getting jobs with the Psychic Friends Network, where their skills could be put to better use.

10 thoughts on “Why I Love The Cunning Realist”

  1. Cindy Sheehan was on Democracy Now this morning. She seems to be holding her own pretty well against the likes of Bill O’Reilly:

    AMY GOODMAN: Cindy Sheehan, the Drudge Report has been leading a campaign against you, along with Bill O’Reilly. And one of the points they make is that when you first met with President Bush, you came out with a very different impression, satisfied with the meeting, they say. And then you changed your tune. And they also talk about dissent within your family about what you’re doing.
    CINDY SHEEHAN: Well, for one thing, June of 2004 and August of 2005 are two different months. They’re 14 months apart. And in June of 2004, we had buried Casey nine weeks before when we met with the President. I was still in a deep state of shock and a deep state of grief. And I’m still in a deep state of grief, and I will be for the rest of my life, thanks to George Bush, but I’m not in shock anymore, and I have informed myself. And I have known that four different reports have come out proving that this war was based on deceptions and lies, and it’s for greed. And not one person should be dead. My son shouldn’t be dead. And the killing shouldn’t continue.

  2. Against my better judgement, I read Erick’s Redstate post about Cindy. Only on posts dealing with torture issues has the Redstate crowd, in general, been more transparently and repugnantly monstrous.
    There are, thankfully, a few voices of decency over there, but they are few among many.

  3. I can’t understand the bloodlust in the hearts of those on the Right toward Ms. Sheehan.
    For Erick over at Redstate to call her a media whore is way over the line, IMO.

  5. Why? What makes the rabid right think she is a good or useful target? If they think she is dangerous to their cause(whatever that might be), they only make her more so by bringing attention to her.
    But Kerry was attacked on his war record; and Michael Schiavo as a husband;and they seem to have some success, so what do I know.
    Like the Schiavo case, if you go far enough over the top you can get away with it.

  6. “At what point did the ability to change one’s mind about a politician become something to be ridiculed and accused of instead of cherished as a basic right?”
    Indeed, one can easily imagine that if she had left her initial meeting with the President and told the media it was unsatisfying- she would be dismissed by the same crowd as a dyed-in-the-wool political partisan. To the true believer, every data point supports their thesis by definition.
    Wu

  7. The viciousness of the attacks is related, I think, to the fact that this crowd is truly something different in American experience. They have a totalitarian mentality, which means they must have ALL the power, ALL the say, and that anyone disagrees with them is by definition illegitimate.
    Ideas aren’t the issue, the issue for them is whether you support them unconditionally, or not. If ideas were at stake, they would not have violated virtually every conservative tenet when in power. In Goldwater’s terms, Bill Clinton was more conservative than these jerks.
    That is why the politics of personal destruction is their standard operating procedure, and why efforts to discuss issues and facts with them is irrelevant – unless you can do it with an audience. Because they do not care about issues or facts. They care only about power.
    This was brought home to me with a jolt when Karl Rove became at least one of the obvious leakers in the Valerie Plame case. The right wingers immediately shifted from giving lip service to the outing haveing been wrong, to attacking Wilson, Plame, and others all over again. All that changed was that one of their own was the guilty party, and their position shifted 100%.
    Think of the shift in the Communist Party of the US after the Hitler-Stalin Pact. They went from denouncing the Nazis to denouncing those opposed to the Nazis. Same immediate flip-flop by all the Republican ideologues.
    Sheehan’s treatment fits this approach perfectly. For O’Leilly, Malkin, Limbaugh, and the other totalitarians, she has no right to disagree. And the BIg Lie is a perfectly fair approach to all issues.
    We are dealing with genuine totalitarians, unAmerican Americans, paying lip service to American values while undermining every one of them.

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