Fightin' the Good Fight

If it weren't so goddamned hot in Crawford, Texas, I'd send Cindy Sheehan her own flack jacket. She could use it.

First, while she was being ignored by the President's motorcade, her husband filed for divorce last Friday. That's the kind of compassion that Newt Gingrich showed to one of his wives when he asked for her signature on divorce papers at her hospital beside while she battled cancer. What a guy, Cindy. Sad to see him go, I'm sure.

Then, the Bush's wacko neighbor starts shooting a rifle in the air this weekend during Cindy & Company's prayer vigil and he makes no apologies because "this is Texas." Another MENSA member drove his truck through the camp and flattened 150 of the crosses volunteers erected in honor of the war casualties. And...the Secret Service keeps driving their SUVs by the camp at full speed, laying on their car horns. Seems like Ms. Sheehan is getting underneath someone's skin!

And now the Right's Talking Points Machine is operating at full speed, attacking Cindy for being "allied with" (watch out for those words -- they were in the fax) Michael Moore, writing columns for progressive publications, and that great media intellectual Fred Barnes called her "a crackpot." Yeah, right up there with the abolitionists and suffragettes, huh Fred? Those wack jobs were just wasting their time.

W is so busy biking, reading, and relaxing, he still can't find a few minutes to speak with Cindy because, he says, he has to "get on with his life." I bet Casey Sheehan would say the same thing if he could. After serving as an altar boy and an Eagle scout and serving in Iraq, I bet he would have wanted to "get on with" a family, a career, and even some grandkids for Cindy. But, W, you can't worry about that. You've got bigger fish to fry -- literally -- while you enjoy your vacation.

I hope Cindy doesn't take W's behavior personally -- he's been treating the American people with the same arrogance and lack of accountability since he left Yale. When he wasn't using federal subsidies to pay for failed oil drilling efforts, he was milking taxpayers to pay for a baseball stadium, eventually sending their young people to die in Iraq to do the very "nation building" he accused Al Gore of in their first presidential debates. As he drives by her camp behind tinted glass, he is snubbing her in the same way he snubs Americans by threatening to dismantle their Social Security accounts, their wilderness areas, and their court system.

Take heart, Cindy. Frank Rich calls W a sort of dead man walking in his latest article in the New York Times. The war is over, he says, the President just doesn't know it yet. He's one popularity point away from the lowest rating LBJ received at the height of the Vietnam War. You helped get him there, Cindy. Hang in there and keep fighting the good fight. It doesn't matter if you "win" or not. The fact that you are doing battle means everything.