We've Got It, Cindy Sheehan Ward Carroll | May 29, 2007
Cindy Sheehan spent part of her Memorial Day posting a farewell of sorts at the Daily Kos. That's right - the grieving mother who morphed into an anti-war icon is exiting the stage.
"I have spent every available cent I got from the money a 'grateful' country gave me when they killed my son and every penny that I have received in speaking or book fees since then," Sheehan writes. "I have sacrificed a 29 year marriage and have traveled for extended periods of time away from Casey's brother and sisters and my health has suffered and my hospital bills from last summer (when I almost died) are in collection because I have used all my energy trying to stop this country from slaughtering innocent human beings."
She also writes, "The most devastating conclusion that I reached [on Memorial Day morning], however, was that Casey did indeed die for nothing. His precious lifeblood drained out in a country far away from his family who loves him, killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think. I have tried every since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful. Casey died for a country which [sic] cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives. It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy and that hurts the most."
In general, any parent who has lost a child in Iraq or Afghanistan deserves the nation's respect and sympathy. The scars from that sort of loss to a family are deep and permanent, to put it simply. But, unfortunately for Cindy Sheehan, being a Gold Star mom doesn't grant her immunity from criticism when she comes off as a self-aggrandizing opportunist or dishonors her son's service.
Full disclosure here: Sheehan's efforts have served me personally. She made me realize - for all my frustration and displeasure over the activities of the Bush administration and for all the cutting edge music I've downloaded in recent years - I'm still no liberal. You see, to truly be a liberal in America today you have to cast yourself as an all-caring, all-feeling being while at the same time demonstrating utter disdain for those who dare to hold strong convictions that differ from yours.
And that's why she's leaving the arena: For all of her stunts, for all of her happenings, for all of her soundbites, the majority of this nation doesn't agree with her - on anything she says. So she's doing what every good and modern liberal does when things get tough: She's taking her floppy sun hat and going home . . . wherever that is. You see, she lost her husband and her money and nearly her remaining kids . . . but you know that because she told you. And she told you because this joke of a movement she concocted a few years ago is all about her. As her name recognition and star power increased in anti-war circles, she grew into the typical American celebrity: cocky, pompous and self-absorbed. She was the show - a big draw, a headliner. What she said mattered because she said it. Just ask her; she'd tell you.
But as with most who attempt to trade on public sentiments, the arc of fame is swift and impartial. Cindy quickly went the way of Andrew Dice Clay. The crowds stopped showing up. The planners stopped asking her to be a headliner. (And she can't appear if she's not the headliner, can she?) She became a parody of herself faster than she could cheer, "What do we want? Peace! When do we want it? Now!"
It wasn't her fault. It couldn't have been. After all, she was Cindy Sheehan, rally headliner. Well, read on, Daily Kos readers. It was those damn conservatives and their hate squads and those weak Democrats who were supposed to pull the plug on the war. (Yes, as Sheehan swings at the pinata that is her exit from the public eye, she actually takes aim at the party that made her.)
Then in a (hopefully) final act of perceived defiance, she goes from embarrasing to inexcusable. She stains her son's honor once and for all by claiming he died for nothing - a shameless and desperate attempt to one-up her critics. She would sell her son out in death to try and win an argument and in so doing she fades into the sunset as nothing more than a pathetic joke - a wholly unsympathetic character.
But there's more. At the end of the requiem of sorts she takes another three pedantic steps back and chucks a Hail Mary of a liberal cliché, writing, "You are not the country that I love and I finally realized no matter how much I sacrifice, I can't make you be that country unless you want it. It's up to you now."
Thanks, Cindy; we've got it. If you would have taken the time to stop listening to yourself and push away from the podium at some point in the last three years you would have realized we had it all along. You see, we who differ from your point of view didn't come into our beliefs arbitrarily. We earned them - a concept foreign to most liberals who have more ego than life experiences. And while we're at it, we'll go ahead and preserve Casey's honor in spite of you, honor that is timeless and exists outside of the political spectacle you've attempted to make it. Regardless of how callous you demonstrate yourself to be, those who understand the notion of service over self will never accept the idea that he died for nothing.