Now that Cindy Sheehan, the “Peace Mom” — or even “Mother
Peace” (as fawning Dana Milbank of the Washington Post has
it) — has gone back to her own mom, who has had a stroke, it seems
a good time to reflect on what she means to the media. Obviously
there’s a great story there if they can make the case that this
ordinary mom from California who claims she just wants to meet with
President Bush has created a “peace movement” where there wasn’t
one before. Ron Fournier of the Associated Press writes that “What
began as one mother’s vigil on a country road in Texas two weeks
ago has grown into a nationwide protest, putting a grieving human
face to the miseries of war and the misgivings about President
Bush’s strategies in Iraq.” Charles Gibson of “Good Morning
America” says that “all across the country protests against the war
in Iraq, inspired by the mother standing her ground at President
Bush’s ranch. But is anyone in the White House feeling the
heat?”
Likewise, Wyatt Andrews of CBS says that “Cindy Sheehan has
tapped the public’s frustration,” while Geoff Morrell of ABC says
that “Cindy Sheehan is re-energizing the anti-war movement.” But of
course all these reporters know perfectly well that Cindy Sheehan
didn’t “inspire” or “re-energize” anything. There has been a
left-wing anti-war movement since before the war even began, and it
is now doing its utmost to batten on to Mrs. Sheehan in order to
create the impression that it amounts to a grass-roots movement —
an impression that the media are only too eager to promote.
Moreover, they pretend to believe that Bush is making a big mistake
by not meeting with her. I say “pretend” because they couldn’t
possibly believe this unless they also believe that a meeting with
the President is what Cindy Sheehan really wants; and to believe
that, they would have to be idiots.
I know, I know. Media idiocy is not exactly unheard of. One
commentator who appears pretty slow on the uptake is Jim Hoagland
of the Washington Post who writes that Mrs. Sheehan’s
“vigil risks becoming political theater disconnected from its
larger purpose.” Uh, Jim, what larger purpose would that be? Well,
let’s see. “A vigil by a war victim’s mother should be an act of
devotion that transcends political theater,” he writes, indulging
himself in the magisterial editorial should. “Bush owes
Sheehan the respect of the meeting she seeks — if she demonstrates
that she will show him the respect any elected president deserves.”
You mean like calling him just a liar instead of a liar
and a war criminal? Almost as idiotic is George
Stephanopoulos. He not only says that Bush is making a mistake, he
pretends to believe that Republicans privately believe Bush is
making a mistake. Newsflash, George. They don’t.
But if Mrs. Sheehan really believes that Bush is a liar and a
war criminal, why does she want to talk to him? So that he can
explain to her why he’s not a liar and a war criminal.
Maybe then she’ll pipe down and “show him the respect any elected
president deserves,” in Mr. Hoagland’s formulation. But does anyone
seriously suppose that there’s anything the President could say
which would persuade her of his good faith when she has so loudly
insisted to all the world that it doesn’t exist? Does she seriously
believe, any more than her sponsors in MoveOn.org, that even if he
did meet with her, and even if she hadn’t already poisoned the
wells of any potential dialogue, that she has any chance of
persuading Bush to abandon Israel and his oil baron buddies to pull
out of Iraq? No, Jim Hoagland, becoming political theater
is the larger purpose behind her demonstration.
And what’s showing is what’s always showing in our contemporary
American political theatre, namely the psychodrama of authenticity.
My favorite bit of the week’s histrionics comes from
Newsweek:
Privately, Bush has met with about 900 family members
of some 270 soldiers killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. The
conversations are closed to the press, and Bush does not like to
talk about what goes on in these grieving sessions, though there
have been hints. An hour after he met with the families at Fort
Bragg in June, he gave a hard-line speech on national TV. When he
mentioned the sacrifice of military families, his lips visibly
quivered….Family members interviewed by Newsweek say
they have been taken aback by the president’s emotionalism and his
sincerity. More complicated is the question of whether Bush’s
suffering is essentially sympathetic, or whether he is agonizing
over the war that he chose to start.
And what would be the difference between these two things? Why
would the President’s “suffering,” that is, not be
“essentially sympathetic” if he were “agonizing over the war that
he chose to start”? Wouldn’t, in that case, the “agonizing” have
sprung from the sympathy? Or does Newsweek imagine that
Bush is “agonizing” only because of the mistake he made in going to
war and its political cost to himself and that it is just
coincidental that this happens only after he has met with grieving
family members?
I’m trying to make sense of the question, but I don’t think it
makes any sense. What Newsweek is really asking, I think,
is whether Bush’s suffering is sincere. Or sincere enough.
But that for some reason is a question the media by and large don’t
yet permit themselves to ask — just as they don’t permit
themselves to engage in Mrs. Sheehan’s wilder charges of criminal
behavior on the President’s part, or even to reflect on the
relevance of them to her request for a meeting. They may believe
similar things themselves, but they don’t say them because to do so
would too obviously blow their cover. That’s why they are reduced
to asking absurd questions such as this about what Bush is
agonizing about while upholding the absurd pretense that the Peace
Mom really just wants a chat with him. They’ve got to cloak their
hostility to Bush by such means but don’t seem to realize that most
people aren’t fooled for a minute.
