Sheehan, Sullivan leading way
Hurricane Katrina blew Cindy Sheehan, war-protesting mom, off the pages of the country’s newspapers this week. As George W. Bush wraps up his summer vacation, Sheehan is moving on, too. But more anti-war appearances are penciled into her datebook.
I’ve been tracking the adjectives applied to Sheehan, in the mainstream press and in online blogs. Some of the kinder ones include: moonbat, crackpot, drama queen, merry divorcee, colossal phony and pot-addled hippie.
Some blogs post unflattering photos of Sheehan and encourage readers to create nasty captions to go with the photos. With each insulting name and mean-spirited caption, I rejoice. It means Sheehan is being taken seriously. It means her message might work. Our troops might come home from Iraq sooner rather than later.
Sheehan is seen as a threat to those who disagree with her and a prophet to those who agree. She’s definitely a player.
I predict that when the history books highlight the point when the masses began turning against the war in Iraq, Sheehan’s photo will be included with the narrative. A Washington Post-ABC News poll released this week showed that slightly more than half of those surveyed support Sheehan.
If Sheehan were considered a joke, the name-calling would have ended by now. Labeling women with unkind words has always been a scare tactic intended to shut women the heck up.
Last week, our nation marked the 85th anniversary of women’s suffrage. For decades, suffragists worked toward the right for all women to vote. They were lampooned in cartoons and ridiculed in newspaper editorials. They were called bitter, ugly, old, unfeminine, man-hating. They were deemed not-nice women in an era when nice was the coin of the realm.
These ancestral moonbats and crackpots even protested in front of Woodrow Wilson’s White House and went on hunger strikes in prison. Such drama queens!
Now, movies and documentaries gush about the struggles and the courage of the suffragists. And Susan B. Anthony is immortalized on her own coin.
Like every bold woman from every generation, Sheehan is imperfect. She first allowed herself to be swayed by fanatics who thinned out her message. She is not photogenic, which makes it easy for blogs to post terrible photos of her. Even feminist columnist Ellen Goodman described Sheehan’s voice as “high-pitched.”
But the women who change history are often not the best-educated, best-looking, most-intelligent. Nor are they always the savviest at media manipulation or plugged into the “proper” social and political networks.
They sometimes emerge from great sorrow and outrage, as Sheehan did, after her son was killed in Iraq.
Or they step forward because no one else will. We have a homegrown example here.
Shannon Sullivan, of Spokane, filed a recall petition against Mayor Jim West in May. The media described her in early stories as an unemployed former florist, a divorced mother. Some folks lamented the fact Sullivan didn’t possess instant credibility by being part of the movers-and-doers crowd in Spokane.
A week ago, as Sullivan testified in front of the Washington state Supreme Court, her 9-year-old son fidgeted behind her. Yet journalists no longer call Sullivan just a single mom. Now, she’s a recall organizer, a petition sponsor.
Sullivan’s credibility is growing on the job with her. She looks as if her power suit fits.
Recently, Cindy Sheehan wrote: “Before this all started, I used to think that one person couldn’t make a difference … but now I see that one person who has the backing and support of millions of people can make a huge difference.”
Women who lead make-a-difference movements need emotional flak jackets so their spirits don’t get stained when those mean words are pitched their way. Sheehan and Sullivan both have their flak jackets on. And they seem prepared to keep them on for that long, long march into history.