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| Fifth Column |
| The Cindy Sheehan Peace Train |
| 2005-09-22 |
| by Byron York, National Review EFL'd a bit. It's not easy staging a cross-country antiwar protest, even a tiny cross-country antiwar protest. Just ask the organizers of Cindy Sheehan's "Bring Them Home Now" tour, which rolled into Washington Wednesday, starting with a hassle with police near the Capitol and ending with a minor traffic accident just a few yards from the White House. It was that kind of day. Sheehan was scheduled to appear at noon on the front lawn of the Capitol. It couldn't be called a rally; just a handful of Washington supporters showed up on the lawn to join dozens of journalists. The real stars were the TV crews; 15 cameras were set up in a semi-circle in front of a bank of microphones where Sheehan would speak. But noon came and went, with no Sheehan. A young man named Ryan Fletcher, from an organization called the Mintwood Media Collective, paced around, a cell phone to his ear, getting updates from the three buses in which Sheehan and her supporters were riding. Less well-known than Fenton Communications, which advised Sheehan last month during her protest near the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas, Mintwood describes itself as "a worker-owned and operated public relations firm born in the aftermath of the mobilization against the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington DC, April 16th and 17th, 2000." "Major funding for the Cindy Sheehan Show is provided in part by Mintwood Media Collective--Your One-Stop Solution for Speaking Truth To Power and Sticking It To The Man.SM" During that protest, Mintwood boasts, it came up with "a comprehensive media strategy that succeeded in placing stories on the front pages of major newspapers, on local and national television and radio, and Internet information sites worldwide." It promises to do the same for clients today. "If you have a Truth to speak to Power, a Man to Stick It To, or a major international conference to disrupt, give us a call or visit our website at . . ." But on this day the clients were having a hard time getting to the media. Fletcher explained that the buses had been held up by Capitol Hill police "Omigaia! The Pigs--they're gonna shoot Mother Sheehan! Rove planned this, I tell ya. Run, Cindy, it's a trap!" while officers performed routine searches for weapons and explosives. They'd be arriving soon. But 15 minutes passed, then 30, then 40, and still no Sheehan. . . . To keep the moonbats entertained, Steve Earle pulled out his guitar and sang the extended club-dance remix version of "The Revolution Starts But when the buses arrived, they weren't buses at all. Instead, the "Bring Them Home Now" bus tour — the "o" in "Now" was a 60s-style peace sign — consisted of three rented recreational vehicles, "Gas-guzzling RVs! With every mile, despoiling the fragile ecosystem and putting more obscene profits in the pockets of the Bush Oil Conspiracy! Who's the treasonous Rethuglican behind the wheel?" "Cindy Sheehan." "Oh. Never mind." each with perhaps ten or twelve people on board. That was it. "Our movement is growing every day. Yesterday we only had nine." First out was a woman named Lisa Fithian. A well-known organizer in the world of anti-globalism anarchists and antiwar protesters, Fithian played a major role in the violent shutdown of Seattle during the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting, was a key planner in protests at the Republican and Democratic national conventions in 2000 and 2004, and organized demonstrations at trade meetings in Washington, D.C., Prague, and Genoa. Last month, Fithian told National Review Online that she had been with Sheehan since the first day of the Crawford protest. And Wednesday, in Washington, Fithian was clearly the woman in charge. . . . When the group made it to the microphones, it soon became apparent that, after six weeks in the public eye, there was nothing much that Sheehan could say that she had not said — and had not been reported — a thousand times before. "Hi, it's been one month and fifteen days since "A whole dozen of 'em!" Well, sort of. After Sheehan and a few others spoke, the group pulled out a blow-up of a letter to President Bush, which Sheehan signed as photographers captured the scene. As the rest of the group added their signatures, Sheehan walked away to sit on the lawn behind the microphones. A few photographers followed her, and when she sat down she seemed to muse on the strangeness of it all. "Cindy Sheehan sitting on the grass," she said. As she did, Fithian assembled a huddle of the organizing team and began to give orders for the rest of the day. She explained how they would be going to the White House, how they would set up a mini-Camp Casey on the Mall, how they would take the subway to a hostel that had been arranged for them to stay during the protest. About that time, a cameraman shooting the scene noticed something. "I've seen a lot of these people before," he said. Pointing to a woman a few feet away, he said, "That one was at the World Bank thing. They're professional protesters." . . . Indeed, the photographer's observation pointed to something telling about the day. On close examination, the Cindy Sheehan phenomenon appears not to be a mass movement of any sort but rather to consist of a small group of relatives of U.S. servicemen and women — there were perhaps 30 in all with Sheehan on Wednesday — accompanied and guided by a group of full-time This isn't a "grassroots" movement, it's an "astroturf" one. After the Capitol meeting broke up, the group re-boarded the At the White House, the small group was nearly crushed by photographers as Sheehan handed the signed letter through the iron fence to a staffer inside the White House grounds. Sheehan was asked about a report that top Bush adviser Karl Rove had referred to her as a "clown" in an off-the-record discussion. "I may be a clown, but a lot of people who are in there are criminals," Sheehan said, pointing behind her. "And we need to get them out of our house." After a few more questions, Sheehan headed back to the RVs. When the group arrived, someone turned on an external sound system, which began playing "The Very Best of Peter, Paul and Mary." The air was filled with folk music from many decades ago. "This land is your land, this land is my land..." What follows needs no embellishment. Truth is better than fiction, every time. The entourage began to pull away. But just at that moment, as the RV in the rear of the group began to move, someone on the sidewalk yelled out, "The Vespa! The Vespa!" It turns out the rear bumper of the RV had caught on a motorcycle parked on the sidewalk; when the Peter, Paul and Mary kept singing. "How many roads must a man walk down? Before you call him a man?" Fithian stuck her head outside the RV. "Oh, sh*t," she said, seeing the fallen cycle. "You broke the Vespa!" someone yelled from the street. "You broke the Vespa!" Fithian called for some men to help her prop up the cycle. She then began to write a note to leave for the Vespa's owner. At that point, a man came out of a building — he said he knew who owned the cycle — and began to write down the RV's license plate number. He said he would go find the owner. Fithian decided to wait. Unable to stay still for long, she paced back and forth for a while before pulling out a cigarette. "No wonder I started smoking," she said as she lighted up. Peter, Paul and Mary kept singing. "It ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe..." After a while, the owner, a middle-aged man, came out, carrying a small digital camera. He was quite understanding about the accident and exchanged information with Fithian. He took a few pictures of the damage. Fithian pulled out the RV rental brochure — on the front, it said "Your fun has just begun" — and pulled out a document to give the man. There was a long wait while someone went inside to copy it. Peter, Paul and Mary kept singing. "That's what you get for lovin' meeeee..." While all this was going on — a half-hour passed before the situation was cleared up — Sheehan and the rest of the group were stuck in their RVs, waiting to leave. . . . "Rove did it, I tell ya! He put that Vespa there to frame Cindy so's they could arrest her and send her off to Guantanamo in a black helicopter and distract attention from . . . ." |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #15 the S stands for Stuff? Wow...I was wrong all this time |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-09-22 20:31 |
| #14 Now that Gentle People of the Blog is a a Fucking King Hell Rant. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-09-22 17:43 |
| #13 Great, Lisa Fithian (an Anarchist Organizer??) and Medea Benjamin (Pie, anyone?) leading the Saint Cindy Aquarium Choir. |
| Posted by: mojo 2005-09-22 16:59 |
| #12 "Fithian called for some men to help her prop up the cycle." Pikers and wimps - it only takes 5 drunk fraternity brothers to flip a VW Rabbit on it's side. Not that I was there or anything... |
| Posted by: Raj 2005-09-22 15:39 |
| #11 Thanks. |
| Posted by: Mike 2005-09-22 15:35 |
| #10 You Just Can't Make This Stuff Up |
| Posted by: eLarson 2005-09-22 15:20 |
| #9 YJCMTSU? |
| Posted by: Mike 2005-09-22 15:01 |
| #8 at about $1000 a week and $.30 per mile rental per, plus gas, twelve occupants per RV (!), gonna be some extra cleanup charges incurred, this is the best they can do? |
| Posted by: john 2005-09-22 14:30 |
| #7 There's always Juche I am told. |
| Posted by: MunkarKat 2005-09-22 14:20 |
| #6 Sniff, kinda makes me think of gentle Gentle. |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2005-09-22 14:11 |
| #5 Lol. YJCMTSU. I feel like a little rant thingy. Pretend this was "found" on The Blog Of Death or something. [rant] Sometimes, no matter what the facts, people simply refuse to accept reality if it fails to match their preferred World View. That self-selected, not reality elected, World View may be Universalist Utopian, Gaiain, Nirvanian, Islamo Club Paradiso, 72 Virginian, Ganja Rastafarian, TranzioSocioFascioMaoIstapukian, Pinkly Partisan Proctological, Holy Holesome Hollyweirdness, Social Net Testers For A Free Ride, Grand Marches and Traffic Jams For No Reason, Naked Romps For Piece, Naked Spelling Bees, Paper-Mache Latte Artsy-Fartsian, Roaring-Head Big Hugs, Fools For Tools, Comet Cult Cutesy, or Stoners For - um - I Forget. Same same. It ain't reality, so it's fantasy. To say they're persistent is to acknowledge their institutional alliance, from the Perverted Press to Idiotarian Intelligentsia to Academicians of the Revisionist Revolution to Ist-Enabler Foundations of Piece in Our Minds. Ironically, without the social base of normal sane people, underpinning every aspect of society, these superfluous parasitical pukes couldn't exist - they'd have to get real and get jobs and perform - or starve. These hardworking folks carry the dead weight of the fantasists on their backs. The burden is considerable - and worsening. Something Ugly This Way Comes. A tipping point will come when they say, "Why? Why play by the rules when the game is rigged with such huge pus-filled pockets of zoomers and slackers, systemic hernias, a plethora of pointless pikers? Why not get me a piece o' that pie? Screw this gig - working for a living be hard - and they prove that you don't have to..." And well they should ask, for it is so on an individual level. Cumulatively, however, that shifts the tipping point - advances the moment of truth. I think that point approaches quickly. Let 'em win. Yeah, you heard me. Let the dipshits have it for awhile - say 8 years. You can either bleed for a long time, dancing on the edge of gangrene and systemic failure - or you can take preventative action - and amputate the diseased limbs. Let the process run on high for awhile - and demonstrate its fatal nature. Pull out all of our forces - from everywhere. Bring 'em home for R&R. Let 'em see The Real Enemy. Let the Oil Machine both nearly ruin us with costs and fund those who hate us so much that they live to die and live to kill us, however ineptly. Let them set us up for a few major hits - and take it on the chin a few times. There will be some terminal irony - the focus will be on the Moonbat enclaves. NYC gone? Damn! That sucks. SF gone? Oh shit! I'll miss The Wharf. ChiTown slid into the Big Waters? Gosh, where will I get good Italian Sausage Deep Dish Pizza, now? And let the ChiComs become a bona-fide threat - militarily our equal - almost. It's inevitable that we will be forced to decimate them, en masse, someday - they insist - a job for a very few Boomers, actually. Let that moment become crystal clear. So. When the shit and fan become one and feces have been flung far and wide and everyone with sense thinks this is It, Take It Back - by force. Amputate the losers - and that means whatever they want it to mean, as long as it means they cease forever living in LalaLand. The Big Sleep. Working stiff. Whatever. Terminate The Little Kingdoms, The Middle Kingdoms, the WakiLands, the TackyLands, the Jungle Schemers, and the Tranzi Dreamers - the lot. Fuck it. Randy Newman was right: No one likes us. *sniff* Neutron devices would be best. We'll sit by the campfires with our surviving understated Cousins and gregarious Ozzy bros and feel really bad. We'll sing "Kumbayah" out of key, pop a few brewskis, tell tall tales of imagined loss and commiseration, just for them. It'll be quite touching. We'll stage something like the Hunter Thompson DeathFest of Pointless Pomp & Poopery. Promise. Later. I'm thinking trauma is not to be avoided, but embraced. Beats the hell out of this death by a thousand cuts bullshit. Let's get it ON, already. [/rant] Fry us up. |
| Posted by: .com 2005-09-22 14:06 |
| #4 "Fithian called for some men to help her prop up the cycle." Exactly how weak are these vegan protestors? A vespa can't be that hard to stand up, hell my 14-year-old daughter could stand one up. And she was smoking and driving an SUV? Pandering to BIG tobacco and oil? If they stopped by McDonalds then they have to turn in their anti-globalization and ACLU cards. |
| Posted by: Cyber Sarge 2005-09-22 13:53 |
| #3 A journey of a thousand press conferences begins with one microphone. |
| Posted by: Seafarious 2005-09-22 12:45 |
| #2 "A well-known organizer in the world of anti-globalism anarchists ..." Jumbo shrimp, anyone? |
| Posted by: Xbalanke 2005-09-22 12:27 |
| #1 I wonder if being a pawn pays well? Cindy? |
| Posted by: tu3031 2005-09-22 12:27 |