Angry in the Great White North

From MichaelMoore.com (August 31):

Well, George and I are leaving Crawford today. George is finished playing golf and telling his fables in San Diego , so he will be heading to Louisiana to see the devastation that his environmental policies and his killing policies have caused.

And, should I dare say "global warming?" and be branded as a "conspiracy theorist" on top of everything else the reich-wingers say about me.

Godwin's Law:

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.

There is a tradition in many Usenet newsgroups that once such a comparison is made, the thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress.

Cindy Sheehan, you lose.

This language suggests some measure of desperation. The carefully controlled image of a grieving mother was paying limited returns. More and more Americans were becoming desensitized to image after image of a tearful Cindy Sheehan. At some point, most parents would get fed up, and more than a few had begun to call for Cindy Sheehan to return to her other three children, whom she seems to have almost abandoned. Cindy Sheehan addresses that point:

Carly, Andy, and Janey: Who would love to see more of their mom, but who understand that we are trying to save their future by what we do. I love you guys, and I will see you very, very soon (yea!!!) I couldn't do what I do without their love and support.

We can only imagine what the kids really think, though the evidence suggests that they are not nearly as supportive as Cindy Sheehan would have us believe.

And conspicuous by its absence is any mention whatsoever of husband Patrick Sheehan. Having filed for divorce in what Cindy Sheehan insists was a mutual decision, but what has all the hallmarks of a unilateral and punitive move on the part of Patrick, Cindy's husband doesn't even rank a mention.

As I said, the message has shifted. It is less familial and more political. Less centrist and more radical. Less reasoned and more strident. The Cindy-Sheehan-as-grieving-mother bandwagon seems to have run out of gas, so they are fueling up on Cindy-Sheehan-as-angry-radical. Given that the Sheehanites are now hitting the road for a tour of closed congressional offices, it probably makes sense to re-tool the message now.

My expectation is that the tour will fall of the media radar screen. The coming of fall will mark the start of a new political cycle, and the focus of media interest will be on how politicians and parties are responding to the challenges from Hurricane Katrina. Cindy Sheehan's group will be whittled down to a group of hard-core supporters as more main-stream anti-war activists look for a new media focus. Ironically, that might be Hurricane Katrina as well, pounding away with the argument that the military units in Iraq should be brought back to the US to help with the relief efforts.

That argument might find more traction, and Cindy Sheehan will be thrown to the side, where out of the spotlight, she can revert to the radical she has always been.