Cindy Sheehan Says Goodbye
(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
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.
