When my ex-wife was about 8 1/2 months pregnant with our daughter, she was waiting on the T platform at Park Street Station at the downtown end of Boston Common one night waiting to come home. As her train approached, an elderly gentleman carrying (yes, I said carrying) a cane came rushing up to the platform yelling, "Don't push me! Don't push me, I'm an old man!" The crowd was parting, but with the squeal of the train, my ex didn't hear the ruckus until it was on top of her.
With the train set to stop just in front, the old though obviously agile man yelled again, "Don't push me young lady!" from behind her, pushing her himself almost into the path of the train. She had barely time to catch herself and reorient to the rushing crowd making for the door. Somehow, the little old bugger with the cane got lost in the mix.
Finally she got on the train and as most Bostonians are polite and chivalrous, was offered a seat immediately. Whereupon her assailant reappeared to claim the seat for himself because he was, you guessed it, "old." Fortunately, the man giving up his seat was having none of it and casually threw an arm in the geezer's way.
I am reminded of that story whenever I hear someone complaining peremptorily about either the questioning of one's patriotism or, as in the current case in Crawford, of the claim to one's "moral authority." Much like the man on the subway, those who make loud noises about the rights they possess before anybody ever questions them is playing the age old game of misdirection. In either case, any criticism is supposed to be neutralized by the preamble to almost any statement, no matter how outrageous: I'm a patriot, I'm a veteran, I'm a grieving mother so you mustn't argue with me because I am better than you for who I am.
It is often a feature of this tactic that the holder of such status be portrayed as having
their particular situation--and thus greatness--thrust upon them. They carry the great yoke of martyrdom for all to see. And yet, they seem, well, not-so-saintly from way back where the perspective is. This is because after a while, none but the most vehement and fanatical support remains if all that is left is nothing but stature in search of a premise.
John Kerry found out too late that every time he mentioned Vietnam a tiny chip fell away from his well constructed facade, until finally he just didn't look to the majority like a good bet to take over for a rather lackluster wartime president. So instead of taking a gamble on a pockmarked hero, most voters opted for the status quo.
Cindy Sheehan is running out of things to say, also, and may or may not have energized the anti-war movement. But it is in doubt if she has won over anybody with her rhetoric and poorly reasoned and vacant platitudes. Negative sloganeering does not tend to sway American voters, which is probably why there are more vocal supporters of Sheehan on the New York Times OpEd page than in the Democratic leadership.
Not that there aren't party supporters for Sheehan. It's just that most smart Democrats actually want the US to win in Iraq and not simply leave. They also don't buy Sheehan's opinions about their country, and although most secretly thrill to her characterizations of the president, they are not about to drag themselves out to toss epithets like dried Texas pasture patties.
But for her supporters, Sheehan is the beginning of a movement, a contemporary yet nostalgic figure who conjures memories of past triumphs and by proxy invokes the vast longing among the faithful for less war and more tie dye. I believe I even saw her flash the peace sign for the cameras the other day.
But make no mistake. Cindy Sheehan is no Abbie Hoffman. Hell, she isn't even Dustin Hoffman. But what she wants to be is neither revolutionary nor actor, but the country's Moral Authority. Now whether this would translate to taking away the de facto position held by Billy Graham or follow more in the lines of the Archbishop of Canterbury, one cannot tell at this time. It is possible that she seeks another sort of authority of the moral kind--a spiritual leader possessed of veto power over all government decisions and personnel, whether elected or not.
There is a model for such a position, although I am not sure if it can be conferred
on Cindy through popular outcry or whether there has to be some official sanction. Nevertheless, we have a working supreme leader such as I am referring to now. And as luck would have it, he's doing business in about the same neighborhood as a goodly portion of the American Army, and views America and the president much in the same manner as she. The model is of course, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran.
This is the guy whose very presence mocks the outcome of the recent so-called free elections in which Tehran's chief sanitation engineer Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elevated to the presidency. What good is a president anyway when you have your very own Supreme Leader? Who needs it? Might as well put in a real stinker. Khamenei has the moral authority to control the government, army and lives of every last Iranian and I will bet you Cleveland that Mahmoud knows this all too well. How did Khamenei get his authority? He inherited it from the original Supreme Ayatollah Khomeini, who we are told was a Source of Emulation. The rules had to be changed to allow the riff-raff Khamenei to ascend the throne.
And where did ol' Khomeini get his M.A? Why, he overthrew a Shah, of course. An autocratic,
America-loving Shah. Of course, Reza Pahlavi, for all his faults was better than these characters. But the Ayatollah didn't much like the fact that clerics were being required to demonstrate some competency and took advantage of the second coup of Reza to make a bee-line back from his flat in Paris to lead Iran directly into the twelfth century. But hey, Iranians were so tired of the Shah's heavy hand--and the revolutionaries knew that with Jimmy Carter in the White House he would not be escorted back as he was in 1953.
If we are to believe the polls--and why not?--the president, our very own Shah of a sort (you know, dynasty, sham election, curtailed civil liberties) is having his own popularity problems just about now. As as in 1979, there is a figure, a Moral Authority standing in something like exile (how else to describe Crawford?) waiting for the time to make a triumphant entry into the capital as the vanquished tyrant is sent packing for friendlier locales. Like Kennebunkport. 
Much like the Shah, we have a head of state that is vulnerable right now, which somehow is interpreted by those who hate him as an opportunity to get him out of office prematurely. Unfortunately, this president seems to love his wife so that avenue's closed. So how to do it? Well, there is this war thing going on. No one seems to know why we're in it or how we got there, except for that Israel thing. And events are not going so well, so what if we find someone with Moral Authority like the Ayatollah to lead the True Americans in a campaign to win back our country? Sound far fetched? O yea of little imagination.
That figure for many is Cindy Sheehan and make no mistake, she is talking much like a revolutionary. The difference here is that the stuff that Cindy spouts usually tends to be left off of mainstream news shows because not only are they a bit out of the park, but in many ways they sound just like the kind of stuff that come out of the mouths of mullahs. I understand that Cindy wants to emulate a master, and maybe calling George Bush the world's biggest terrorist will win some props from college sophomores and Michael Moore sycophants, but it just isn't going to play in Peoria. The irony being that with the stage she has been given, if she came off as only slightly less unhinged, she might have a chance at forcing something.
Whatever, Cindy isn't likely to be influencing American policy any time soon. That's a very good thing. We voters get to do that every four year with respects to the presidency. We don't have coups and generally we don't do impeachments, recent case of insanity accepted, so Cindy will have to wait and try to elect her candidate next time out. In the meantime, she can harp and emote all she wants, but neither she nor her followers have any ground to stand on.
What Sheehan represents is the part of the left that refuses to accept their loss and who somehow believe that if they can just sit everyone down and point out where electing Chimpy was a bad, bad idea, that the masses would descend on Crawford or Washington and demand the president's ouster. Don't count on it. And don't count on US troops leaving Iraq according to the Sheehan timetable. Sad to say, but the world does not revolve around Cindy Sheehan and her band of followers who seemingly have no need for jobs. You'd think with all that wealth flying around, somebody would be happy with Bush.
Eventually, Cindy Sheehan will take her Wikipedia article and go home. And she will be left with not much but her anguish. We should not wish that on her. We should take her story to heart. This poor woman's grief, let out of its box and manipulated and advertised like the new Fall Line-up has been made a mockery by the very people who promote it. Whether that's moral or not, I'll leave it for Cindy to decide.
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