Cindy Sheehan, Mr. Post, and Me

Actually, there is very little of me in this post at all, except for this introduction which I realize is very long (so perhaps there's more than just a little of me in here).

Rose said, "Look who Rolling Stone picked as their "Maverick of the Year" and held the magazine up to show us a closeup of Cindy Sheehan, her face twisted in sorrow.

*collective eye roll from everyone in the house*

I haven't said much about Cindy Sheehan here because I really haven't much to say except that I feel great pity for her. I believe she is unbalanced by her sorrow and being taken advantage (by the media if nothing else). As I was expounding on that for the umpteenth time, Rose burst out, "Even Mr. Post doesn't like her ... and he's a liberal!" (Bishop Lynch is a conservative bastion and the "liberal" teachers all are well known.)

She then pulled this editorial from the school newspaper and began to read it aloud. At that moment her ride showed up and after she left, I was so interested that I continued reading it aloud to Tom.

Cindy Sheehan And I

Hmm. This is exasperating. Frustrating. Infuriating. Maddening.

Cindy Sheehan and I.

I have read a good bit on her, since that is what I do. I read a good bit in a good bit of publications about a good bit of people and a good bit of subjects. I am an American intellectual with the academic pedigree to anchor it, the didactic curiosity to sustain it and the confidence to flaunt it.

We have next to nothing in common, Cindy Sheehan and I. She is from the West. I am from the East. She is a woman. I am a man. She likes wine. I like beer. She appears to be unemployed. I work a million hours a week. She has bad hair. I have no hair. She alludes to the "treasonous deviltry" of the right and the "conniving greed" and "commercial manipulation" by the Jews to cause this war. I encourage sober evaluation of Conservative reasoning and teach the historically justified trepidation of the Jews. And yet, due mostly to the irresponsible promotion of her by the media and the carelessness for which most Americans cultivate their judgments, we are the same.

Exactly the same, Cindy Sheehan and I.

You see, Cindy Sheehan and I oppose the war in Iraq. She has been presented by the mainstream media as the symbol of the anti-war movement by lending ridiculous amounts of air and print time to her funky, contrived protest in Crawford in which she demanded the politically impossible: a face to face talk with our Commander in Chief about why her son was killed in the conflict. So we have formed an invisible and yet impenetrable bond with each other, Cindy Sheehan and I.

Because of her of the war eventually ends with me being defensive and dismissive about Cindy Sheehan and her neo-hippie polemics about why we are in error for waging this conflict. I do not have the space allotted in this forum to properly elucidate the salient arguments, be they ultimately right or wrong, that provide the ballast for my opposition.

But trust me on this one -- or come by any time at the end of Heritage Hall and we can advocate our contentions in person -- I have absolutely lucid, rational, informed and intellectually honest rationale.

Cindy Sheehan does not.

I can trace, for instance, in whatever detail you desire, the complex, serpentine path of Al Qaeda commencing with the Afghanistan resistance to the Soviet Union invasion in the late seventies, to last weeks arrest in Bali of 4 money launderers in a second tier sleeper cell supported by a convoluted terrorist network of shady operatives like Butheiana al-Haj Saleh and Rafkik Bashar al-Semak.

Cindy Sheehan can not.

I can tell you the dynamics and peculiarly American reluctance to embrace Imperialism that has led us through a long trail of disappointments that includes the Post-Spanish War Philippine revolution, to complications in the artificial construction of sovereign countries in post-WWI Europe, to systematic flaws in Cold-War Domino Theory initiatives like the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam, to the precarious and dicey nation-building effort in Iraq today.

Cindy Sheehan can not.

I can effortlessly engage in lively and multi-faceted discussions on a variety of levels about the ramifications of our dependency on crude oil. I can highlight the diverse commentaries of Thomas Friedman, David Broeder, Noam Chomsky and George Will as to the critical element of oil in the ultimate outcomes of our goals and aspirations as the leader of the free world.

Cindy Sheehan can not.

If, by this stage of this rant you have attained the glazed over look of the typical American consumer of journalism, than you have confirmed my claims.

And yet Cindy Sheehan, because of the media's obsession with her honestly motivated but ultimately trite, goofy mission, and the determination of Americans to insist on cursory analysis, she has become the talisman of the anti-war movement. Preposterous.

Is the media wagging the electorate? Is the government wagging the media that is wagging the electorate? Is the pedestrian American, groomed on a steady and relentless diet of 60 second sound bites on the occasional evening news, wagging the media who is wagging the government?

That my friends, I do not know. But guess what? Neither does Cindy Sheehan.

Hmm.

I suppose, than, in the end, we do have something in common after all, Cindy Sheehan and I..

Mr. Post is another of the excellent teachers Hannah has been fortunate enough to have at Bishop Lynch. He teaches U.S. Government and is a tough grader. As mentioned above, he's a known liberal (quelle horreur!) and this makes the kids wary when they take his class. Hannah also found him to be intelligent, humorous, and extremely fair.

The Anchoress has often reminded us of her liberal friends with whom she does not agree often, but with whom she is still friends regardless.

Mr. Post's editorial reminds me of this and also makes me think of my very good friend, Toby, who is one of the few liberal leaners with whom I can have a rational conversation about politics and religion without either of us going for the throat. We respect each other's beliefs, intelligence, and ability to reason ... even if we also believe that the other person is generally wrong. (Ahhh, but we all have the right to be wrong about politics as well as religion, do we not?)

This is a truly rare quality. I am lucky to find it in Toby. Hannah is lucky to have seen her teacher exhibit it so consistently. And I feel lucky to pass this editorial on to y'all, even though I do not agree with Mr. Post about the war in Iraq. Should we ever discuss it (Heaven forfend ... I have the distinct notion he'd argue circles around me), I somehow feel that he and I would have much more in common than Cindy Sheehan has with either one of us.