Cindy Sheehan Says Goodbye

Journalism is about strong storylines and personalities, a fact that goes a long way towards explaining why journalists loved Cindy Sheehan. At least at first.

Hollywood couldn't have cast someone better for her particular niche in the debate over the war, after all: She was a grieving mother whose son had died in Iraq. An articulate woman who had been driven to speak out as a result of her pain. A figurehead who gave a semblance of coherence to an anti-war movement too heterogeneous for journalists to get their hands around. A character who brought a flesh-and-blood presence to what had previously been only an idea.

But Sheehan, who says she is stepping down as the unofficial "face" of the antiwar movement, didn't turn out to be quite the person that members of the media wanted her to be. She went further to the left than most journalists were comfortable with, publicly embracing Hugo Chavez and endorsing Harry Belafonte's characterization of President Bush as "the greatest terrorist in the world." She also wasn't subtle in her rhetoric, opting for phrases like "fell in lockstep behind his Führer" that didn't help her image among those who were not already literally in her camp.

And so the press, as is its way, gradually stopped paying much attention. Sheehan's controversial rhetoric and stunts may have helped get her and her movement more attention in the short term, but they also led members of the press corps to conclude that she was becoming increasingly irrelevant to the average American. (Her son, she said at one point, "was killed for lies and for a PNAC Neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel.")

And then there's the fact that as American public opinion moved against the war, journalists had less and less use for Sheehan from a narrative perspective. Her decision to step down may be getting decent play in the press, but the truth is that Sheehan hasn't been particularly relevant in the debate over the war for a long time.

This isn't to say that Sheehan didn't make a difference – for a brief period, she focused attention on the antiwar movement at a time when support for the war was still relatively strong. And it's hard not to admire someone for speaking out for what they believe in, even if you don't agree with it. The question is whether she might have been more effective in the long term if she hadn't scared away the journalistic establishment that initially embraced her.