The epic narcissism of Cindy Sheehan
Niall Stanage
July 18, 2007 10:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/...f_cindy_s.html
Even the American left's netroots are getting tired of Cindy Sheehan. It's a shame it took them so long.
Sheehan, the epic narcissist who became the face of the anti-war movement, has been banned from posting any further entries on Daily Kos, arguably the most influential of all liberal blogs in the US.
The Kossacks have pulled the plug on Sheehan because of her threat to challenge the speaker of the House of Representatives, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, for her congressional seat.
Sheehan has said she will decide on July 23 whether to go ahead with her attempt to oust Pelosi - who is, incidentally, about as liberal as congressional Democrats get - from her San Francisco district. "Democrats and Americans feel betrayed by the Democratic leadership," Sheehan recently proclaimed with her customary certitude.
As most people know, Sheehan came to prominence in summer 2005 when she set up camp outside President Bush's Texas ranch. She demanded to meet the president to discuss the death of her son, army specialist Casey Sheehan. He was killed in Iraq in April 2004.
It would be inhumane not to feel sympathy for Cindy Sheehan's loss. But it would also be softheaded to ignore the numerous inconsistencies, self-aggrandisements and missteps that have characterized her behaviour.
Sheehan's initial demands to meet Bush, and her escalating criticisms of him, had a peculiar genesis. Sheehan in fact had already met Bush before she rolled up to the ranch. Interviewed by a local newspaper after the early encounter, she restrained herself to rather mild criticisms of the war's conduct. Of Bush himself, she said he was "sincere" about wanting freedom for the Iraqi people. "I know he's sorry and feels some pain for our loss," she added.
That seems a rather circumspect judgment on a man she would later denounce as "the Fuhrer" and the biggest terrorist in the world.
Less than two months ago, Sheehan announced her "resignation" from the anti-war movement. "I am finished working in, or outside of this system," she wrote. She told the Associated Press: "When we come back, it definitely won't be with the peace movement with marches, with rallies and with protests."
She is currently in the middle of a march.
A more sinister example of Sheehan's slipperiness came back in 2005. A row erupted over an email in Sheehan's name which contained remarks that, even taking the most forgiving possible interpretation, were suggestive of anti-Semitism. The best reporting on the furore came on Slate, and it hardly coved Sheehan in glory.
All of these events, though, pale into insignificance beside Sheehan's overarching trait: her apparently boundless hubris. Her basic position appears to be that, since she has lost a son in the war in Iraq, every pronouncement she makes about that war, or about the wider world, must axiomatically be correct.
Bereavement is no guarantee of wisdom. Yet Sheehan has been encouraged in her conceits, not just by opportunistic figures on the far left but by media icons, including America's most-overrated columnist, Maureen Dowd.
"The moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute," Dowd declared in a 2005 column.
Is the moral authority of bereaved parents who believe the war was justified, or who continue to support Bush, similarly unimpeachable? Dowd was silent on this point, though her views can easily be guessed at. Sheehan, for her part, described such parents as "brainwashed". "They know the pain and heartache and they should not wish it on another," Sheehan scolded.
The inference - that anyone who disagreed with her could be motivated only by cruelty - was breathtaking in its presumptuousness.
Presumptuousness, though, is yet another signature Sheehan trait. Like so many people at both ends of the political spectrum, she apparently believes that centrist positions can only be arrived at through cowardice, ideological corruption or bad faith.
She has compared Hillary Clinton to the ultra-conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh and has asserted that "there must be an underlying shady reason" for Pelosi's disinclination to bring impeachment proceedings against the president.
In her resignation letter back in May, Sheehan vented at a nation that seemed too slow to bow down before her in gratitude. "I have invested everything I have in trying to bring peace with justice to a country that wants neither," she lamented.
Perhaps her compatriots were reluctant to follow a woman whose desperate drive for self-publicity extended to stretching out on her son's grave for a glossy Vanity Fair photoshoot.
Cindy Sheehan is a self-styled sanctimonious didact. May her second retirement come swiftly, and may it last a lot longer than the first.
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