Cindy Sheehan: Crank and Crackpot

The current media darling is an anti-Iraq War protestor named Cindy Sheehan, a mother who lost her son in the War. She is camped outside President Bush’s Texas ranch.

Missing in most of the media reports about her is one embarrassing fact. The woman is a crank, or at least a pliable person willling to be used by the anti-war left.

National Review online records some of the things she said during a conference call with liberal and leftist bloggers.

“This is something that can’t be ignored,” Sheehan said during a conference call with bloggers representing sites like democrats.com, codepink4peace.org, and crooksandliars.com. “They can’t ignore us, and they can’t put us down. Thank God for the Internet, or we wouldn’t know anything, and we would already be a fascist state.”

“Our government is run by one party, every level,” Sheehan continued, “and the mainstream media is a propaganda tool for the government.” Sheehan also called the 2004 presidential election “the election, quote-unquote, that happened in November.”

She also called Bill O’Reily’s Fox News show “an obscenity to humanity.”

The full audio from the call can be found on the Joe Trippi blog.

Family members decry Sheehan

Members of her own family not only disagree with her, but suspect her motivations. Accoring to the Vacaville Reporter:

Sent to a San Francisco radio station Thursday, the first public acknowledgement of a family rift came from Cherie Quartarolo, sister-in-law to Cindy Sheehan and godmother to her son, Casey, who was killed in action in Iraq last year.

Reached by phone Thursday, Quartarolo said she consulted with other family members before releasing the brief statement, but she declined to elaborate. She signed the memo on behalf of Casey’s paternal grandparents, as well as “aunts, uncles and numerous cousins.”

Noting that her family is still grieving the loss of Casey, Quartarolo wrote: “We do not agree with the political motivations and publicity tactics of Cindy Sheehan. She now appears to be promoting her own personal agenda and notoriety at the expense of her son’s good name and reputation.”

Sheehan was not always such a strident critic of the President. In June 2004, her family was one of 17 families who had lost loved ones who met with Bush. Her impressions of the President in the wake of that meeting were at odds with what she is now saying.

“We have a lot of respect for the office of the president, and I have a new respect for him because he was sincere and he didn’t have to take the time to meet with us,” [Cindy’s husband] Pat said.

Sincerity was something Cindy had hoped to find in the meeting. Shortly after Casey died, Bush sent the family a form letter expressing his condolences, and Cindy said she felt it was an impersonal gesture.

“I now know he’s sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis,” Cindy said after their meeting. “I know he’s sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he’s a man of faith.”

The meeting didn’t last long, but in their time with Bush, Cindy spoke about Casey and asked the president to make her son’s sacrifice count for something. They also spoke of their faith.

Her turnabout has been rather dramatic. It’s been described and analyzed by a writer for her hometown paper.

So, what changed? The anti-Bush crowd now handles Mrs. Sheehan, answering her phone and prepping her for the media, according to Sheehan’s online diary.

She still doesn’t like critical media attention or when the media ignore her.

“I conservatively got three to five phone calls a minute. I did about 25 phone interviews and several TV interviews,” Mrs. Sheehan wrote in the diary. “I was supposed to do: ‘The Today Show,’ MSNBC live interview, ‘Connected Coast to Coast’ and ‘Hardball,’ both on MSNBC. ‘The Today Show’ just never showed up and the other three MSNBC shows cancelled for no reason. Could it be because NBC is owned by General Electric, a major defense contractor?”

Could it be that the woman is captive to some rather bizarre ideas?

That the media are paying so much attention to her is highly revealing.