thedrifter
09-06-05, 06:55 AM
Sheehan: A Token of the Tone-Deaf Left
By Don Feder
FrontPageMagazine.com | September 6, 2005
Like me, you’re probably sick of Cindy Sheehan (the self-styled Peace Mom). But la Cindy is instructive. She’s symptomatic of the left’s biggest strategic problem – the fact that, in terms of pr, it’s tone-deaf.
When it comes to choosing spokesmen for their causes, leftists seem to go out of their way to pick weirdos, whack-jobs, celebrity air-heads, scuzzy Marxist college professors (who tell audiences that America deserved what it got on 9/11), independent-film producers who look like refugees from a Laurel and Hardy movie, multicultural racists and flaming anti-Semites.
Then they wonder why the middle class runs shrieking from them.
On Tuesday, an ABC News/Washington Post poll was released showing Cindy’s Crawford camp-out resulted in slightly more support for the Iraq war. While 79% said Cindy’s crusade had no impact on their view of the war, 10% said it made them more supportive of the president and 9% said the Cindy sideshow turned them toward the anti-war position.
Could it have been otherwise?
If they weren’t a bunch of sour-faced elitists who are alienated from American values and totally disconnected from the feelings of ordinary Americans, the leadership of the left would have found a Gold Star Mom who wasn’t a cross between Shirley MacLaine and Rosa Luxemburg.
Somewhere out there, there must be a nice, normal lady who lost a child in the conflict but doesn’t: 1) Believe that America is responsible for terrorism 2) Think the Iraq war is a Neo-Con conspiracy to aid Israel and 3) Say she wants to curse president of the United States to his face -- someone in an apron, who bakes cookies and goes to church on Sunday and who’s willing to serve as a spokesman for bring-the-troops-home-now.
Instead, they got a foul-mouthed California crystal-caresser who thinks she channels her dead son, calls George Bush “an idiot” and the “world’s biggest terrorist” (and wants him impeached for “war crimes”), dubs her son’s killers “freedom fighters,” says Osama bin Laden “allegedly” was behind the World Trade Center attack and thinks if Israel gets “out of Palestine” the mullahs and imams will love us. (Even liberal columnist Susan Estrich calls Sheehan “a raging, ignorant, anti-Semite.”)
Why didn’t they just find a bag-lady wearing a swastika who’d mumble incoherently while picking her nose and spitting on the American flag? Such a creature could hardly have been less appealing than Mother Sheehan.
But Cindy is only the latest of the left’s cavalcade of the bizarre. Those they’ve anointed to carry their standards include:
George Soros – The Hungarian-born billionaire who wants to legalize drugs and, in the last election, compared Bush’s foreign policy to the Holocaust.
Michael Moore – The blimp in a baseball cap who often expostulates on why he hates Americans (because we’re so stupid and un-European).
John Kerry – The Louis Prima of politics, who’s supported his lifestyle and career with the resources of rich women he’s married and who, as part of the anti-Vietnam movement of the ‘70s, claimed he himself had committed war crimes in Southeast Asia.
Al Franken(stein) – A myopic dwarf in serious need of orthodontics who thinks he’s funny (having confused droll with drool).
Al Sharpton – This unabashed trickster, huckster, race-baiter and Jew-hater (also an honored senior statesman of the national Democratic Party) could lose a beauty contest to Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy.
Barbra Streisand – Color-Me-Stupid is reminiscent of a remark attributed to Theodore Roosevelt – Every time she opens her mouth, she detracts from the sum total of human knowledge. She’s also reputed to be one of the nastiest people in Hollywood (no mean feat).
Sean Penn – The Saddam poster boy (he actually flew to Baghdad before the war and posed in front of a giant picture of the Iraqi tyrant) said Reagan’s Alzheimer’s was karmic justice.
Oliver Stone – The Cecile B. DeMille of leftwing paranoia – i.e. the CIA, FBI, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and everybody who ever voted Republican killed John F. Kennedy.
Edward Moore Kennedy – The hero who left Mary Jo Kopechne to drown while he dithered, the corpulent boozer and wanton womanizer who’s sat in the Senate for four decades, is a self-styled tribune of the poor who was to the manor born.
Howard Dean – Doctor Demento (who will forever be remembered as the I-Have-A-Scream candidate, based on his foaming-at-the-mouth performance following the 2004 Iowa Caucuses) recently observed that the GOP was a party of white Christians – what was left unsaid, but clearly implied, was “and that’s why they hate minorities and want to impose a theocracy on the United States.”
Ward Churchill – The University of Colorado professor said the office workers killed in the World Trade Center attack were “technocrats” and “little Eichmanns” – tools of the U.S. military-industrial complex. If Churchill (who tries to pass himself off as part American Indian) ever loses his teaching position, he can always open a charm school.
That the left invariably ends up with these contemptible clods as its emissaries to the American people is a reflection of the gulf that separates the denizens of Beverly Hills, Park Avenue and Martha’s Vineyard from the citizens of Des Moines, San Antonio and Omaha.
The former look at Cindy Sheehan and say, “She’s courageous and sympathetic… Who could possibly fail to find her credible”? The latter listen to her and gag.
Despite the fact that it’s lost seven of the last ten presidential elections, and hasn’t controlled the House of Representatives in better than a decade, notwithstanding that the networks keep losing viewers while FOX gets stronger, even though Rush Limbaugh and his clones rule talk radio – the left still doesn’t get it.
To add to the fun, it’s re-commissioning Hanoi Jane. Ms. Fonda will be part of a “Stand Up and Be Counted” anti-war road show that culminates in a DC rally on September 24.
Oh now, that’s a great idea – a woman who veterans view as a traitor and a rich, pampered, loose-mouthed commie-lover – will become the latest celebrity mouthpiece for opposition to the war.
I don’t know whether to laugh or smile.
Ellie
By Don Feder
FrontPageMagazine.com | September 6, 2005
Like me, you’re probably sick of Cindy Sheehan (the self-styled Peace Mom). But la Cindy is instructive. She’s symptomatic of the left’s biggest strategic problem – the fact that, in terms of pr, it’s tone-deaf.
When it comes to choosing spokesmen for their causes, leftists seem to go out of their way to pick weirdos, whack-jobs, celebrity air-heads, scuzzy Marxist college professors (who tell audiences that America deserved what it got on 9/11), independent-film producers who look like refugees from a Laurel and Hardy movie, multicultural racists and flaming anti-Semites.
Then they wonder why the middle class runs shrieking from them.
On Tuesday, an ABC News/Washington Post poll was released showing Cindy’s Crawford camp-out resulted in slightly more support for the Iraq war. While 79% said Cindy’s crusade had no impact on their view of the war, 10% said it made them more supportive of the president and 9% said the Cindy sideshow turned them toward the anti-war position.
Could it have been otherwise?
If they weren’t a bunch of sour-faced elitists who are alienated from American values and totally disconnected from the feelings of ordinary Americans, the leadership of the left would have found a Gold Star Mom who wasn’t a cross between Shirley MacLaine and Rosa Luxemburg.
Somewhere out there, there must be a nice, normal lady who lost a child in the conflict but doesn’t: 1) Believe that America is responsible for terrorism 2) Think the Iraq war is a Neo-Con conspiracy to aid Israel and 3) Say she wants to curse president of the United States to his face -- someone in an apron, who bakes cookies and goes to church on Sunday and who’s willing to serve as a spokesman for bring-the-troops-home-now.
Instead, they got a foul-mouthed California crystal-caresser who thinks she channels her dead son, calls George Bush “an idiot” and the “world’s biggest terrorist” (and wants him impeached for “war crimes”), dubs her son’s killers “freedom fighters,” says Osama bin Laden “allegedly” was behind the World Trade Center attack and thinks if Israel gets “out of Palestine” the mullahs and imams will love us. (Even liberal columnist Susan Estrich calls Sheehan “a raging, ignorant, anti-Semite.”)
Why didn’t they just find a bag-lady wearing a swastika who’d mumble incoherently while picking her nose and spitting on the American flag? Such a creature could hardly have been less appealing than Mother Sheehan.
But Cindy is only the latest of the left’s cavalcade of the bizarre. Those they’ve anointed to carry their standards include:
George Soros – The Hungarian-born billionaire who wants to legalize drugs and, in the last election, compared Bush’s foreign policy to the Holocaust.
Michael Moore – The blimp in a baseball cap who often expostulates on why he hates Americans (because we’re so stupid and un-European).
John Kerry – The Louis Prima of politics, who’s supported his lifestyle and career with the resources of rich women he’s married and who, as part of the anti-Vietnam movement of the ‘70s, claimed he himself had committed war crimes in Southeast Asia.
Al Franken(stein) – A myopic dwarf in serious need of orthodontics who thinks he’s funny (having confused droll with drool).
Al Sharpton – This unabashed trickster, huckster, race-baiter and Jew-hater (also an honored senior statesman of the national Democratic Party) could lose a beauty contest to Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy.
Barbra Streisand – Color-Me-Stupid is reminiscent of a remark attributed to Theodore Roosevelt – Every time she opens her mouth, she detracts from the sum total of human knowledge. She’s also reputed to be one of the nastiest people in Hollywood (no mean feat).
Sean Penn – The Saddam poster boy (he actually flew to Baghdad before the war and posed in front of a giant picture of the Iraqi tyrant) said Reagan’s Alzheimer’s was karmic justice.
Oliver Stone – The Cecile B. DeMille of leftwing paranoia – i.e. the CIA, FBI, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and everybody who ever voted Republican killed John F. Kennedy.
Edward Moore Kennedy – The hero who left Mary Jo Kopechne to drown while he dithered, the corpulent boozer and wanton womanizer who’s sat in the Senate for four decades, is a self-styled tribune of the poor who was to the manor born.
Howard Dean – Doctor Demento (who will forever be remembered as the I-Have-A-Scream candidate, based on his foaming-at-the-mouth performance following the 2004 Iowa Caucuses) recently observed that the GOP was a party of white Christians – what was left unsaid, but clearly implied, was “and that’s why they hate minorities and want to impose a theocracy on the United States.”
Ward Churchill – The University of Colorado professor said the office workers killed in the World Trade Center attack were “technocrats” and “little Eichmanns” – tools of the U.S. military-industrial complex. If Churchill (who tries to pass himself off as part American Indian) ever loses his teaching position, he can always open a charm school.
That the left invariably ends up with these contemptible clods as its emissaries to the American people is a reflection of the gulf that separates the denizens of Beverly Hills, Park Avenue and Martha’s Vineyard from the citizens of Des Moines, San Antonio and Omaha.
The former look at Cindy Sheehan and say, “She’s courageous and sympathetic… Who could possibly fail to find her credible”? The latter listen to her and gag.
Despite the fact that it’s lost seven of the last ten presidential elections, and hasn’t controlled the House of Representatives in better than a decade, notwithstanding that the networks keep losing viewers while FOX gets stronger, even though Rush Limbaugh and his clones rule talk radio – the left still doesn’t get it.
To add to the fun, it’s re-commissioning Hanoi Jane. Ms. Fonda will be part of a “Stand Up and Be Counted” anti-war road show that culminates in a DC rally on September 24.
Oh now, that’s a great idea – a woman who veterans view as a traitor and a rich, pampered, loose-mouthed commie-lover – will become the latest celebrity mouthpiece for opposition to the war.
I don’t know whether to laugh or smile.
Ellie