Thursday, August 18, 2005

The Sliming of Cindy Sheehan

A Vacaville mom grieves her son and seeks to ask the President why. It touches a nerve and other Gold Star parents and average Americans join the chorus. The question grows louder, more insistent: "WHY?"

The response? Compassion? Honest dialogue? No, the right wing slime machine swings into high gear, Karl Rove's chubby fingers on the throttle. Chickenhawks Matt Drudge and Bill O'Reilly toss the first clumps of mud. She had her "audience" with our naked emperor and should gratefully shut up. To them, her disheveled appearance in that roadside ditch suggests a deteriorating mental situation...rather than the heat and filth of a central Texas summer.

Then came the gutter mouths on KNEW. Cindy, a noontime stand-in for Jeff Katz opined, is probably mentally disturbed or on meth. Isn't that what Vacaville's famous for? To Glen Beck, that Limbaugh wannabe, she's nothing more than a "tragedy slut."

Then came the violence. The shotgun blast on the edge of a Sunday prayer service. The midnight ride of a self-styled Paul Revere at the wheel of a chain-dragging pick-up truck, plowing the white crosses and American flags into the Texas mud. Oh, what a Christian! Oh, what a patriot! Oh, what bravery! What, one wonders, comes next?

And, all the while, our Chicken-in-Chief huddles in his ranch, playing cowboy in his boots and mirrored glasses, chainsaw at the ready, occassionly venturing out for a fundraiser, speeding silently by the desecrated flags and the broken crosses, each bearing the name of a dead young American.

And, still, the questions remain. Why? And what, Mr. President, is the "noble cause" that demanded young Casey's life...and the thousands upon thousands of other American and Iraqi lives? We're waiting Mr. President, we're waiting. "Freedom's on the march" won't cut it anymore.