The enchanting treble warble of the Peace Mom will be heard incessantly outside the White House, even though Obama is its occupant. Sheehan, the activist anti-war mom of fallen Army Spc. Casey Sheehan, once made her home in Crawford, Texas for several months in 2005, nestled among the satellite trucks and adoring lenses of the national media, who happily indulged the mayor of Camp Casey's rants about the president.
I imagine the media will not be as consistent as Sheehan in its coverage of her, but ABC has done its part in reporting on her trip to Martha's Vineyard and her new pledge to take up residence outside the White House:
She's back and this time, she's here to stay. Cindy Sheehan says she is moving to Washington. The anti-war activist was outside the White House for the second day in a row, with a bullhorn and a handful of protestors, shouting against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Guantanamo and calling for "health care not warfare."
Cue that special brand of crazy eccentric, impassioned protest:
Sometimes I look at what I think Senator McCain would be doing, and what Obama's doing and I can't discern any difference. And I think that Obama's foreign policy is obviously a continuation. When you have Robert Gates. When you have McChrystal. When you have Hillary Clinton, who is supposed to be the secretary of state, but who has always been for these wars of aggression. I see is clearly a continuation, a continuation of the policy of empire," Sheehan told ABC News.
Park Police arrested Sheehan and 60 other protestors yesterday, after Sheehan chained herself to the fence on the North Lawn. Sheehan says she refuses to pay the fine and that she and other anti-war activists plan to "step up" their protests until the administration shows a willingness to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan.
Cindy Sheehan arrested? Whither the fretting about the jackbooted thuggery of the administration, in light of this unfair treatment? Whither the quotes intimating jackbooted thuggery that never happened, like the one from this account of a 2005 Sheehan arrest?
"Only people can stop the war," said Laura Linder, 44, of Chicago. She was wearing a red, white and blue bandanna and a Plexiglas hockey mask, and her hands were trembling. She said that the weekend's protests were the first she had attended and that she had never been arrested. "I'm afraid of getting my face bashed in."
Organizers requested a meeting with President Obama to discuss their beliefs.
I look forward to the media's vigilant coverage of the status of that request, and whether Obama will accept it. Start the MSNBC countdown clock.
In the past, Sheehan has been arrested several times outside the White House, and once inside the House Gallery during a Bush SOTU address, for wearing a message tee noting the number of deaths in Iraq, and refusing to cover it. On that same night, a Republican Congressman's wife was kicked out of the gallery for wearing a "Support the Troops" shirt. The rationale for both was that no political demonstrations are allowed in the House.
