Poor widdle Cindy:
SAN FRANCISCO ? Peace mom Cindy Sheehan peered out a window 14 floors above the Civic Center on Friday and asked, Want to see my new car?
She pointed to a sky-blue Volkswagen Beetle convertible parked near City Hall. She explained she hasnt treated herself to much since her son, Casey, died in Iraq in April 2004, but shed always wanted such a car and recently decided it was time for a change.
Sheehans life has changed profoundly since Caseys death ? richer in grief, and in purpose ? and especially since her transformation into an anti-war icon with her August vigil near President Bushs Crawford, Texas ranch.
But after drawing the international spotlight at Camp Casey in Crawford, her name is fading from headlines.
In Crawford, her every word was beamed by a forest of satellite trucks to millions worldwide. On Friday, she and a state lawmaker were attended by TV cameras from one English and one Spanish station; one radio reporter; and one mainstream print reporter.
Sheehan, 48, hasnt slowed down. She was in Sacramento on Wednesday, urging Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to withdraw the California National Guard from Iraq. She addressed a Yom Kippur service Thursday in San Francisco on the nations need to atone for the war. Fridays news conference was a follow-up to Wednesdays plea to the governor.
Shell spend Thanksgiving back at Crawford. Whether shell make lasting headlines there remains to be seen.
She who bursts upon the scene as new news very quickly departs the scene as old news, and for the same reasons, said Todd Gitlin, a 1960s activist whos now an author and Columbia University journalism and sociology professor. In August, in contrast to the news surroundings then, she was hot. In October, shes not.
[…]Larry Sabato, professor and director of the University of Virginias Center for Politics, said Sheehan was a summer of05 phenomenon. This is a classic (media) mode of covering controversy ? its the August doldrums, and a feeding frenzy develops and they usually last a month or two and are gone.
It was interesting while it lasted, the mother of a dead soldier protesting the war and demanding to speak to President Bush. It had a natural resonance with most people, he said.
But many of Sheehans activities during and since Crawford have been in tandem with groups such as CodePink and United for Peace and Justice, whose leaders are well-known to the media and public as full-time activists.
She attracted what in essence became a traveling troupe of anti-war activists and p.r. agents and usual suspects, and the story just ceased to be as appealing, Sabato said. It didnt seem quite as natural and original, it became more of the same.
Sheehans recent move from Vacaville to Berkeley is notable, he said. When you say Berkeley, anyone whos been around for a few decades associates liberalism and anti-war movements with the place.
When you come out of someplace that looks like middle America, you look like the people youre trying to reach. Its tougher to sustain public interest in your movement when you come out of Berkeley. Where youre from matters, where you position yourself matters.
No one saw this coming? She’s a wacked out freak who deserves to be in the trashpile of forgotten history.
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I thought for sure she would pop out of the woodwork for the full moon…
Interesting that she has moved. I wonder how all the Vacaville people who donated labor and materials to remodel her Vacaville house feel about improving it so she could make money.
And a new car too? Wonder who paid for that?
Profiting from her son’s death is as despicable as everything else that freak has done.