Monday, May 28, 2007

Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish

Cindy Sheehan's back in the news. No, she didn't get arrested again or rubbed elbows with dictators. She's fed up with being the face of the anti-war movement. In a missive posted on Daily Kos, she "resigned." (My first question is who made her the face of the anti-war movement.)

One thing she cited was how left-leaning blogs went after her after she renounced her ties to the Democrats. Democratic Underground apparently called her an "attention whore" and told her "good riddance." This may be the first time DU and I have agreed on anything. As I've noted many times before, Sheehan has sought the spotlight many times, not to promote the anti-war movement, but more to promote herself.

Just for fun (because I'm sort of a nerd), I looked at Sheehan's "resignation" and counted the number of times she used "I", "me", and "my." The results were predictable. Out of 1245 words, there were 59 "I"s, 8 "me"s, and 13 "my"s. Running the numbers, I found that 6.4% of her resignation referenced her.

How many times did she reference her son, Casey, by name? Seven times.

Gee, Cindy. Looks like DU and I got it right. (By the way, if you were one of the people who thought I was overly cruel or assinine for pointing out Cindy using her dead son for a stage, you can email me your apology.)

At this point, you have to wonder how much the anti-war movement has been hurt by Sheehan. When she was just the "Peace Mom" she had at least some credibility. Once she went from "Peace Mom" to "Attention Craving Media Figure," that credibility was lost. Yet, the anti-war movement didn't try to encourage her to stick to her stated cause. Instead, they let her go off on her own and say and do things that made her and the anti-war movement look foolish. Seriously, how does rubbing elbows with Hugo Chavez help bring the troops home? Does saying that an anti-war march on Washington, DC, was more important than Hurricane Katrina make people want to tell President Bush to stop the war in Iraq?

Face it, folks. Cindy Sheehan used the anti-war movement to attract attention to herself and stroke her ego. And with it, what could have been a voice for change was turned into a circus with Sheehan being the ringleader.

And you guys say Bush is dumb?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey this is RIGHT ON!!!! Keep up the good work, Tom!!

Anonymous said...

SUCH a GREAT piece. Thank goodness Sheehag is gone for good. She convinced more people like me to move right that she realizes, and that's good.