Totten on Sheehan
We say we don't want to talk about it, and we really don't want to talk about it, but then when we start we keep on talking.
Michael Totten makes his statement in the Cindy Sheehan matter. If there's a "centrist" position on her, it might be there. Some of the comments are interesting. Neo-Neo-Con is among them.
I tend to see this as the anti-war movement finding a Teflon spokesmodel, and finding it in the form of a mother of a brave man who died fighting in the war. They maybe didn’t know they needed her until they found her.
The mother holds and articulates the views of Moveon.org and the similar groups. She’s willing to undertake the destructive mission, and you can’t touch her because she’s a grieving gold star mother. At least, that was the intention. Any attack on her automatically backfires on the attacker. And her message is so interwoven with her narrative and her life that you can only separate the two with great rhetorical dexterity.
I suspect this is the result of the movement seeing one candidate after another knocked off the pedestal. In Michael Moore they had an articulate image-maker, but the rest of America was revolted by his excesses. In John Kerry, they had a war hero. Not good enough, because his enemies undercut his story, and his own actions after the war damaged it, too.
Now the anti-war movement has been handed its magic bullet. You can’t question this. Her son is dead, in Iraq. And she wants to talk to the president (again).
Like Maureen Dowd wrote, her moral authority is absolute. I think that’s a silly statement (if having a son dead in Iraq = moral authority, thousands of Kurdish women outrank Mrs. S.). But I think it gives away the game. That’s what the movement was after.
There’s also an element of the chickenhawk meme in that. Anti-war movements have to deal with the fact that, regardless of how the public feels about any given war, it always seems to be more fond of the soldiers who do their duty in the name of the nation than the protesters who stay safe at home and carp about the government, excercising free speech that was bought in times past by soldiers’ blood.
The chickenhawk meme is an attempt to wrestle out from under that disability. So is the business of wrapping the anti-war movement in the figure of a gold star mother.
I also think this is the generation gap reborn. I looked at dozens of pictures from the pro-Cindy rallies around the nation yesterday. Because they were so dispersed, “big crowd” shots were almost impossible to get. The photographers, following their natural inclinations, then went for the symbolic shot (one hand holding a candle) or the cute shot (young girl, child). But I came away with the impression that the demographics of the attendees skewed toward the age 50-70 generation.
Those were the ones who imbibed their experience of America during the Vietnam war. Yet their sons go off to the military, or to Iraq, as a form of honorable, patriotic service. I’ve seen it in families you don’t know, and we all saw it with Nick Berg. That dissonance is as great as the retired Marine in 1965 watching his daughter go off to a flower child anti-war be-in. It’s just reversed.
I think Bush should meet her, unannounced. Just wait till the press corps is in the room with him and say, "come on, let's go down and talk to Cindy again." And he should be humble and patient. She won’t be. Especially if she’s got her backers with her. She’ll be demanding that he send his own daughters into battle and that sort of shrill thing. Let the cameras show it all.
Michael Totten makes his statement in the Cindy Sheehan matter. If there's a "centrist" position on her, it might be there. Some of the comments are interesting. Neo-Neo-Con is among them.
I tend to see this as the anti-war movement finding a Teflon spokesmodel, and finding it in the form of a mother of a brave man who died fighting in the war. They maybe didn’t know they needed her until they found her.
The mother holds and articulates the views of Moveon.org and the similar groups. She’s willing to undertake the destructive mission, and you can’t touch her because she’s a grieving gold star mother. At least, that was the intention. Any attack on her automatically backfires on the attacker. And her message is so interwoven with her narrative and her life that you can only separate the two with great rhetorical dexterity.
I suspect this is the result of the movement seeing one candidate after another knocked off the pedestal. In Michael Moore they had an articulate image-maker, but the rest of America was revolted by his excesses. In John Kerry, they had a war hero. Not good enough, because his enemies undercut his story, and his own actions after the war damaged it, too.
Now the anti-war movement has been handed its magic bullet. You can’t question this. Her son is dead, in Iraq. And she wants to talk to the president (again).
Like Maureen Dowd wrote, her moral authority is absolute. I think that’s a silly statement (if having a son dead in Iraq = moral authority, thousands of Kurdish women outrank Mrs. S.). But I think it gives away the game. That’s what the movement was after.
There’s also an element of the chickenhawk meme in that. Anti-war movements have to deal with the fact that, regardless of how the public feels about any given war, it always seems to be more fond of the soldiers who do their duty in the name of the nation than the protesters who stay safe at home and carp about the government, excercising free speech that was bought in times past by soldiers’ blood.
The chickenhawk meme is an attempt to wrestle out from under that disability. So is the business of wrapping the anti-war movement in the figure of a gold star mother.
I also think this is the generation gap reborn. I looked at dozens of pictures from the pro-Cindy rallies around the nation yesterday. Because they were so dispersed, “big crowd” shots were almost impossible to get. The photographers, following their natural inclinations, then went for the symbolic shot (one hand holding a candle) or the cute shot (young girl, child). But I came away with the impression that the demographics of the attendees skewed toward the age 50-70 generation.
Those were the ones who imbibed their experience of America during the Vietnam war. Yet their sons go off to the military, or to Iraq, as a form of honorable, patriotic service. I’ve seen it in families you don’t know, and we all saw it with Nick Berg. That dissonance is as great as the retired Marine in 1965 watching his daughter go off to a flower child anti-war be-in. It’s just reversed.
I think Bush should meet her, unannounced. Just wait till the press corps is in the room with him and say, "come on, let's go down and talk to Cindy again." And he should be humble and patient. She won’t be. Especially if she’s got her backers with her. She’ll be demanding that he send his own daughters into battle and that sort of shrill thing. Let the cameras show it all.
Labels: chickenhawk meme, Cindy Sheehan
