cindy sheehan: evil villain

theres a lot been written about cindy sheehan these last days, and about the schmear campaign against her, and about how brave she is and all that.

i dont really care for much of any of that - she's just one grieving mother of many, and the death of her son is no more interesting than the death of more than a hundred thousand others.

i cant even remember when or how she entered the public consciousness - i think she was at conyers' dsm hearings - but im not sure how she got there.

one things for sure though, her situation has created a real problem, and its difficult to see the endgame.

there are reports that she is going to be arrested thursday as a threat to national security - although those reports seem to be largely unsubtantiated - and she has become such a cause celebre that its difficult to imagine that even these horrible people would dare.

they might try to move camp casey away from the ranch - but that is unlikely to significantly change the dynamics.

cindy sheehan has a very simple demand - she wants to see the president. "I want to ask the president, ’Why did you kill my son? What did my son die for?" Sheehan told reporters. "Last week, you said my son died for a noble cause’ and I want to ask him what that noble cause is?"

the problem for the egadministration is that they absolutely cant meet that simple request. i cant see the end-point. bush cant meet her, and cindy wont go away. she has the attention of the media, for the moment, and it will be difficult for them to let the story go. the blogswarm is so heavy that the media wont be allowed to 'forget' the story - not even with a phone call from karl rove.

they tried sending hadley, and they might try sending rumsfeld or rice or others - but it wont assuage her. they might try bribing her, or offer to establish a scholarship in caseys name, or even rename the fucking war after him. but it wont work.

bush cant meet with her - she's already on record saying that there's nothing behind the blank eyes, and that she wont accept his meaningless platitudes, and that he absolutely doesnt have any empathy. he doesnt have any other game - and she'll inevitably report such. the Inappropriate Sniggerer can only say "they die for a noble cause" when he has a bunch of applauding Hoo-Hars as a punchline and a cheerleading media. when confronted with a simple "what do u mean?", the cupboard is immediately shown to be really bare.

all of this has been painfully painfully obvious to most of us for years, but all of a sudden the shitehouse seems to have itself a problem. the 911 widows couldnt do it, a hundred thousand grieving iraqi mothers couldnt do it. millions of blog posts couldnt do it. but for some reason, a mother asking the same question as every other greiving mother might just be able to do it. quite remarkable.

im trying to think of an historical parallel - but cant really find one. for some reason my mind turns to the guy in front of the tank in tiananmen square - although theres nothing similar at all. cindy sheehan isnt particularly brave, and theres nothing iconic about the isodome tent with handwritten signs, and theres nothing unusual about a grieving mother wanting answers, and she isnt the first person to suggest that blinky is a fake, or that the war is a fake. there seems to be some weird confluence of events where maybe, just maybe, we've hit a tipping point. a while back i wrote that maybe it would have been a good thing if the attempted assassination of sgrena was successful because it may have been a tipping point. perhaps the current sheehan situation might be a tipping point.

the question still remains - how does it all play out? imagine if Camp Casey turns into a schiavo-type circus over the summer. wouldnt that be awesome? the only difference will be there wasnt any counter-demonstration at schiavopalooza (at least not one covered by the media) - but if CampCasey becomes a magnet for folks, it will sure as hell draw in lots of the 'war is great' crowd with professionally produced signs, provided by Rendon.

that situation could get really nasty under the texan sun. will some redneck in an SUV run over the isodome? will the minutemen take some time off border protection duty and come shoot evil liberals? will dobsons fetus-lovers start demanding that the women get back to pregnancy slavery? will the media swith from MissingWhiteGirls to we-wish-this-white-girl-went-missing? will a military attack on iran bury the cindy sheehan story?

such will be the summer of love