NYC Letter: Grieving For Attention, IV

As Cindy Sheehan's ongoing grief performances drift into the back pages, the story has been turned over to the second bench for chin-stroking analyses by psychologists, counselors, and people-talk columnists who provide filler articles for empty news stories. Normally these reports are echoes of the original dressed up with a nickel's worth of couch philosophy.

So we were a little surprised to find some columnists contesting the established story points. First, Michael Reagan, eldest son of President Ronald Reagan (Hat tips: V de T and Carine):

WHO DOES CINDY REALLY HATE?

It could well be that Cindy Sheehan is projecting her rage at George Bush when the one she really despises is her late son Casey, who died as a hero in Iraq, precisely because he did die a hero in Iraq.

The more I listen to Cindy Sheehan and consider her past actions and her past words, it occurs to me she has always been a liberal, she's always been anti-military, and she's always been anti-Republican. It appears that she raised Casey in such an environment, yet despite that what does he do? He not only joins the military engaged in a war she bitterly opposes, but to add insult to injury when his enlistment runs out, he re-enlists although he knew that by so doing it meant he would be sent to Iraq where a war his mother despises is being fought.

Think about that. What Casey did was to reject not by words but by deeds his mother's most closely-held beliefs.

Then, to make matter worse in her eyes, this son volunteers to go on a dangerous mission even his superiors warned him against, and dies as a result. Casey Sheehan's sergeant asked for volunteers. Sheehan had just returned from Mass. After Sheehan volunteered once, the sergeant asked Sheehan again if he wanted to go on the mission. According to many reports (and according to his own mother) Casey responded, "Where my chief goes, I go."

And she says of her son, "He died for oil. He died to make your friends," Bush's friends, "richer. He died to expand American imperialism in the Middle East."

How dare he?

Cindy Sheehan doesn't need to talk to the president. A talk with a therapist would be more appropriate.

Those who have skimmed along with our little series (here, here, and here) know we do not believe Ms. Sheehan is grieving at all. We do not pretend to know what Ms. Sheehan is feeling but it's plain what she's thinking. She thinks she is all that.

There is this by one Dr. Barbara Collier (Hat tip: V de T):

OPEN LETTER TO CINDY SHEEHAN

I am a counselor, and I meet with people all the time, who come to me with emotional wounds.

Your anger is really towards your son, because he joined the cause of freedom, of his own free will, and you disagreed with his choice to do so. You had personal goals and dreams for him, and now they cannot happen. His life was cut short, and YOU are feeling ripped off and wronged.

Congratulations! You have now, single-handedly, shamed your own son's memory. Your son VOLUNTARILY, enlisted in the military armed forces, so that people such as yourself could retain the right to speak their minds, make public fools of themselves, verbally attack the office of the President of the United States, and (essentially) try to hold him hostage. You are just a different type of terrorist yourself, and doing the very thing your son died for: resisting.

George Bush is not intimidated by you. He is not frightened by you. And quite frankly, he doesn't have the time for you. There are some 300,000,000 people in this country, and he knows precious few of them by name. Get over it. You do NOT speak for the majority of us. You speak for yourself and have, already, embarrassed way too many of us. Pack up your soapbox, and your Jane Fonda want-to-be cause, and go home. Go sit at your son's graveside and apologize to him for shaming him, the cause HE stood for, and his memory you have belittled.

Ouch. Strong meat from Dr. Collier.

Ms. Sheehan's performances touch people in special ways. Even the jaded second bench.

James Taranto over at OpinionJournal's BOTW(t) manages a greater compassion then we can muster for self-celebrating Cindy Sheehan:

THE SORROW AND THE PITY

The journalists will soon move on, and her political allies may do so as well. For them she is a mere instrument. The White House press corps will discard her as soon as they return to Washington where there's real news going on. Serious opponents of the war in Iraq will cast her aside if her foul statements make her an embarrassment. When that happens, we can only hope that someone still cares about Cindy Sheehan--not as a story or a symbol, but as a human being.