Tone Deft wrote:smutek you jumped the shark.....
I like that saying, it made me chuckle for some reason.
I understand your feelings about her. There are some figures on "the left" that I usually like to distance myself from, Sheehan and Moore being 2 examples.
For me I think it is not because I disagree with them but because, for whatever reason, they make such easy targets for the right.
As far as Sheehan goes, yes she is definitely full of emotion, and rightfully so I think. Unfortunately emotionally charged rhetoric seems to start as a powerful tool, but eventually it gets "old", people grow tired of it and they dismiss you as a loon.
Compare her to say, Robert Fisk or Noam Chomsky (two of my favorites) - logic, facts, and personal experience outweigh (or compliment) rhetoric and it seems to be much harder for their opponents to make a real case against them. In the case of Chomsky I think he has never become a target of the mainstream right simply because his ideas and the words he uses are too complex for them, so they would never read his writings to start with.
But I digress....
The way I see it is that Cindy Sheehan enjoyed the support of the Democratic party establishment only when her message was convenient for them; when they were running for reelection on an anti-war platform. Once they took back control of congress and it became apparent that they were not going to move against the Bush regime, and that they were not going to take real steps to end the war, Sheehan became a liability and was promptly dismissed - or broke with the party, whichever came first.
I think whichever came first isn't important, what is important, to me, is that Sheehan became a liability to the party because, even though she was used as one, she is not a political tool - like moveon.org for example. She is an anti-war activist, her break with the party was inevitable. I think that her "rise and fall" says as much, if not more, about the establishment (and a large part of society) as it does about her. She is an anti-war activist and she has stayed true to her message. Personally I can not say that about the people that I helped to put into office over the last two elections.
That is why I wouldn't agree that she lacks substance.
But that is just my thoughts on it.
peace! - the shark jumper
(ps. you really must come to Baltimore and teach me to play this cursed guitar of mine)
