Post-Gazette Editorial – 2/6/06

This page was last updated on February 6, 2006.

Freedom arrested / A telling incident on the state of our Union; Editorial; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; February 6, 2006.

Read closely and you’ll see the P-G is simultaneously continuing to use Ms. Sheehan to promote its agenda while “throwing her under the bus.” The P-G fawned over Ms. Sheehan in its August 2005 editorial entitled “A mother’s vigil.”

Below is a detailed critique of the subject editorial.

“Peace activist Cindy Sheehan, mother of a soldier killed in Iraq and an irritant to President Bush, was never everybody’s favorite. Even some of those initially sympathetic to her, including this newspaper, must concede that the closer she has moved to the far left, the further she has gotten from persuading the moderate middle of America that the war is wrong.”

[RWC] I love the “peace activist” label. Do true peace activists refer to terrorists as “freedom fighters” and sympathize with communist and/or totalitarian regimes? I don’t know the appropriate label for Ms. Sheehan, but it’s not peace activist.

“The closer she [Cindy Sheehan] has moved to the left?” Ms. Sheehan was far left long before the P-G jumped on her bandwagon and everyone knew it. The mainstream media just chose not to report this fact because it was inconvenient to the “grieving mother” storyline. The way to interpret this paragraph is, “While we completely support everything Cindy Sheehan stands for, we can’t afford to have the public know the truth about Ms. Sheehan and us.”

“Too strident Ms. Sheehan may be, but that does not excuse what happened to her when she sat down to watch President Bush deliver his State of Union address last Tuesday on Capitol Hill.

“She was an invited guest of a member of Congress, Rep. Lynn Woolsey, a Democrat from California. She made no fuss, she did not unfurl any banners, just made the mistake of unzipping her jacket to reveal a T-shirt that bore a message about Iraq: ‘2,245 Dead. How Many More?’”

[RWC] Given that Ms. Woolsey is an avid supporter of Code Pink, I think it’s fair to say she gave Ms. Sheehan the pass in the hope there would be a disruption of some kind. It was her bad luck the Capitol Police also removed a Republican for the same “offense.”

Remember that before she got the pass, Ms. Sheehan was supposed to be outside the Capitol Building banging on pots and pans along with fellow “moon bats” in a ridiculous attempt to disrupt President Bush’s speech.

“For this she was arrested and put in handcuffs. With supreme irony, she never did get to hear President Bush deliver a speech animated by the idea of America spreading democracy and freedom. If she had yelled out and then had been removed, that would have been an overt act of disruption and we would not be writing this editorial. But her crime was to assume that freedom would allow a T-shirt to speak silently for her.”

[RWC] I don’t buy the claim there would have been no editorial had Ms. Sheehan been disruptive. I do believe the P-G “would not be writing this editorial” had only Ms. Young (see below) been asked to leave.

“There is no defending this outrageous action and, to its credit, the Capitol Police issued an unusual public apology to Ms. Sheehan and another woman, Beverly Young, wife of Rep. C.W. ‘Bill’ Young, a Florida Republican. Mrs. Young was asked to leave (but not arrested) for wearing a T-shirt with a political message of another sort: ‘Support Our Troops -- Defending Our Freedom.’”

[RWC] The editorial failed to note why Ms. Sheehan was arrested and Ms. Young was not. When Capitol Police told Ms. Sheehan the t-shirt wasn’t permitted, she ignored them and refused to leave. Ms. Young obeyed the police when they asked her to leave.

“In applying their heavy undemocratic hand, at least the officers were equal opportunity offenders. Now the U.S. Attorney’s Office has been asked to drop the misdemeanor charge against Ms. Sheehan. Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer said in a statement: ‘The officers made a good faith but mistaken effort to enforce an old unwritten interpretation of the prohibitions about demonstrating in the Capitol.’

“This was a gracious and welcome response but the damage was done. Once more, Mr. Bush made his speech in a bubble, once more the point was made that no discouraging word -- not even on a T-shirt -- is allowed to intrude. Inadvertently, sadly, Cindy Sheehan showed that this is the real state of our Union.”

[RWC] This is amazing. By the editorial’s own admission, Sheehan was not removed because she opposed President Bush. Nevertheless, the final paragraph implies otherwise because that furthers the “Bush in a bubble” talking point the anti-Bush crowd has been using recently.