The Insanity of Cindy Sheehan

The most violent reaction that I ever had to any post I'd put up here came last summer when I posted an item about some woman who had showed up at Bush's ranch in Crawford, TX and how the media was overplaying this lady and her handful of friends. I'd never heard of Cindy Sheehan before that day, but she was already a darling of the anti-war lefties and they let me know about it.

Of course, within days of that post, the dangerously bored press corps, trying to stay awake in the muggy Texas heat, went full throttle on "All Cindy, All the Time" and the legend was born.

Since then, Sheehan's star, which shone so brightly in Crawford, has tarnished badly, and though she's still much sought after by the hard-liners, her ability to impact events is now almost non-existent. She's become a parody of herself.

Of course, Hollywood still loves her and is planning a movie about her (starring Susan Sarandon - who else?) and there will be a memoir out soon, but who cares?

SFGate.com has a piece on where she stands today and what has happened to her since last summer:

Early during those muggy August days in Crawford -- when Bush balked at meeting with her and instead went biking, saying it was important that he "go on with my life" -- her credibility was at its peak.

It has since fallen, in the eyes of some. Whether that's attributable to the fierce and sometimes false attacks of right-wing media or to her own complicity in over-exposure isn't clear. But by the end of her "Camp Casey" protest, polls showed as many Americans viewed her unfavorably as favorably.

The right set its sights on her, labeling her a leftist dupe and mocking her as, in the words of one headline, "The Grief Pimp." When her husband filed for divorce, the Web site smokinggun.com posted the papers. Conservative scold Ann Coulter wrote: "Call me old-fashioned, but a grief-stricken war mother shouldn't have her own full-time PR flack."

Sheehan's image rose and fell on her willingness to publicize personal pain. A January Vanity Fair spread featured a photo of Cindy Sheehan, eyes closed, lying on her son's grave: National Review columnist Jonah Goldberg suggested it was "the most shameless, exploitative stunt of the decade."

"These plainclothes celebrities become spotlight addicts. The lows of being out of the news cycle make them crave it all over again. So they ratchet up the zealot factor," said Matthew Fell, media director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs. "Cindy Sheehan went from letting her picture be taken, to posing, to mugging. She's become a caricature of herself."

Some people who respected her "Camp Casey" protest have been turned off by what they, too, see as her pushing the envelope. They blanched when she embraced Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and declared Bush a worse terrorist than Osama bin Laden (she says she addressed the issue of Chavez' own human rights violations privately). She flirted with challenging at the polls California's senior senator, Dianne Feinstein. And talking with Insight last week, she castigated Feinstein and other Democrats who authorized the war as "not 'misled.' I don't buy that. They were war profiteers, plain and simple. Either they were political profiteers or financial profiteers. There's blood on their hands."

Her public rhetoric grows angrier. In the earliest interview, after her first meeting with the president, she gingerly described him as sincere while suggesting he didn't satisfy her about the war. In recent months, she has branded him "The Fuhrer" and a mass murderer, demanding his impeachment. She has squared off against parents who have lost soldiers in Iraq and continue to support the president's policies, labeling them "brainwashed."

And what about her spiritual foundation?

Sheehan has been severed from much of her old life -- or she has severed it herself. Her marriage, her job, her home. Loss of most of her friends, whom she cannot forgive for voting to re-elect Bush. Loss of her Catholic faith (a former youth pastor, she has abandoned Christianity and envisions a universal spiritual creator.)

A mind is a terrible thing to lose.