The Paradox of Cindy Sheehan

Cindy Sheehan spoke on the campus of Saint Mary's College yesterday and, after listening to her in person, it became clear why she is such a provocative and polarizing public figure. The mother of four and staunch anti-war advocate is a confounding combination of passion and bitterness, intelligence and demagoguery, heartfelt sorrow and political savvy.

On the one hand, her insults and ridicule of President Bush and his family seemed entirely unnecessary and counterproductive. Some of her put-downs include referring to the Crawford ranch as a "pig farm," Bush as a "no brain," "utterly incompetent" "D+ student", and the Bush family as a clan "trained to oppress people." On the other hand, her eventual point that now is "no time to be polite" resonates in an era when dissent is branded as "unpatriotic" or "treasonous"--no small insults there either.

On the one hand, Sheehan comes off as a sincere, down-to-earth, grieving mom with not a calculating bone in her body. She exudes principle when she commends young peace activists' refusal to use the violent protests of earlier eras, because "they realize you can't use the tactics of the war machine to fight the war machine." On the other hand, Sheehan's handlers denied her audience the opportunity for a genuine Q&A session. Rather than open the floor to questions, her people solicited written queries which were then sifted through and filtered to Sheehan with blatant calculation. Questions like "who are the war profiteers you are talking about?" made the cut, allowing Sheehan to expand on her argument rather than openly engage her audience. This tactic of "staged" Q&A is, of course, something for which the Bush administration itself is criticized.

So Cindy Sheehan was, to me, a paradox. Her willingness to criticize almost everyone, including the peace movement's "weekend activists", diminishes both her personal and persuasive appeal. Yet you cannot help but feel compassion for the soft-spoken mother whose son, Casey, was killed after five days in Iraq. "After" as Sheehan poignantly added "I had spent my entire life trying to protect him." And maybe the contradictions about her, her comfort with discomfort, the lack of a clear persona or consistent packaging, make her, in the end, all the more genuine, if not broadly persuasive.