Come Out, Speak Up, Act Up

I haven’t blogged much about the right wing smearing of Cindy Sheehan, as so many bloggers are doing a good job of covering and countering that. But this morning I came aross Patricia Goldsmith’s spirited defense of Sheehan and damning of Sheehan’s detractors. She zeroes in on Sheehan’s shift since her son’s death, and what makes the Sheehan smearers tick.

So let’s go back to the two charges the right is leveling against Cindy Sheehan. Number one: she’s changed her story. What story? You can tell them it’s about feelings, but I’m afraid it’s like trying to explain color to a blind person. I guess Cindy Sheehan is now “fair game” for these sadists.

While she was mourning the death of her son over the course of the last year, she has watched the same saga of Bush administration duplicity and deceit that we have all seen unfolding. Unlike a lot of people who don’t have five minutes in the week to think about themselves, let alone politics, Cindy Sheehan was actually paying attention, looking for answers, searching for meaning.

She watched/listened/read: the 9/11 Commission Report, the Dulfer Report, the revelations of Dick Clarke and Paul O’Neill and Bob Woodward, Joe Wilson, and the Downing Street Memos. And she slowly went sane. She saw all these people for who they really are, not just W and his cohorts, but also the mighty wingnuts of the media. They don’t bother her.

Still, you have to wonder about the family environments that produce people like Bill O’Reilly, the just-shut-up man. Or Rush Limbaugh, chief apologist for the frat pranks that are Abu Ghraib. Or Tucker Carlson, who says he likes France now that he knows that it was the French government that blew up the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, killing an environmental activist and he damn well won’t apologize for saying so.

These people celebrate death. They enjoy it.

Read the whole thing. It’s worth the time Goldsmith also draws an interesting parallel with the gay rights movement, urging those who quietly oppose the war to come out, speak up, and "act up" in just the way that Sheehan is doing.  In this she emphasizes a quote from Sheehan.

But I do see hope. I see hope in this country. 58% of the American public are with us. We’re preaching to the choir, but the choir’s not singing. If all of the 58% started singing, this war would end.

Having spent several years in the gay rights movement, and working in the HIV/AIDS movement, I remember very well the slogan "Silence = Death." I remember how the insane the Act-Up protests looked to outsiders, and how sane they looked to those of us who knew up close and personal what motivated the protests and the protestors.

When it comes to Iraq, I think the comparison is legit in one important way. Silence still equals death; the continued silence of the 58% Sheehan speaks of is to some degree complitic the death of American service members and uncounted Iraqi civilians.  

It’s time to start singing, folks.