The end of Sheehanoia as we know it

Looks like Cindy has left the building, or the camp in this case. But not before a climactic weekend that saw her usual supporting cast of pacifists, socialists, America-haters, anarchists, paleocons, unrepentent Marxists, burnout professional protesters and anti-Semites were joined by racial demagogues and a variety of Neo-Nazi groups, the latter no doubt inspired by David Duke’s ringing endorsement of Sheehan and her own anti-Semitic rhetoric. Not to be outdone, the counter protesters, a less interesting group consisting primarily of military parents who support the war on terror and individuals encouraged by radio personalities or web sites, were out in their greatest numbers to date.

After spending a month calling for a second meeting with the president, Cindy is now “very, very, very grateful” that he did not meet with her as it allowed them to “spark and galvanize the peace movement.” Veteran Cindy observers can’t be surprised at this development; doing 180 degree turns vis a vis the president is her specialty. The desire for a meeting was always just a prop anyway; this was all a sophisticated PR campaign from the start.

And it certainly was a very professionally produced, well funded, and media savvy PR campaign that utilized state of the art communications equipment. These guys had their own satellite truck onsite to package and deliver video to TV news organizations and the Internet as well as for the dissemination of press releases. The campaign stayed on message and got its message out (sadly, that message always came down to variations on the theme “America is EVIL!”), even as its lead spokesperson drifted off into the Land of Oz seemingly every day with a series of utterly bizarre statements that grew more incoherent as her celebrity grew, but the mainstream press and television news buried most of it so the effect of Cindy’s loss of rationality was negligible. Fenton is to be congratulated for putting together a very slick PR campaign. The counter protesters in contrast were amateurs, more of the grass roots variety, which is why they got very little coverage other than token notices that they were there and the occasional one liner in a TV report. If you’ve watched any news, you were bombarded with the Fenton message on pretty much a daily basis. The observations of the counter protesters were always pretty hard to find, which leads to the next post.