Wednesday, August 17, 2005
MOTHER SHEEHAN LATEST: DRUMS HEARD
Locals ain’t happy with Mother Sheehan’s Crawford invasion:
Melissa Harrison thought she was just being neighborly when she let a group of antiwar activists hold a news conference on her property. Then her father, who lives just down the road, began calling her Hanoi Jane.
Even in Crawford, which prides itself on its laid-back lifestyle and friendly people, the good-neighbor thing has its limits ...
Sheehan and her supporters tried to play down the friction.
“We are trying to be really good neighbors,” Sheehan said. “We have cooperated with everybody. The neighbors here don’t have any issues with our right to be here. They just have an issue with our physical presence.”
A presence Sheehan would prefer not to be interrupted by a Presidential meeting she doesn’t want. Meanwhile, the hideous sounds of peace activism dominate:
“Property rights is what I’m having a big problem with,” Vernon Harrison said. “I’ve got these guys up here beating and banging on drums and guitars and making noise all hours of the night. There’s nothing I can do.”
But there’s something the activists can do, as Paco points out:
The Madonna of the Ditch and her acolytes might want to consider setting up permanent headquarters at the old Branch Davidian site in Waco. Janet Reno’s not around anymore, so they ought to be safe there from Secret Service agents and anxious dove hunters.
They’re not safe from Andrea Harris, who argues that Mother Sheehan’s posturing has set back the feminist cause “to maybe the Middle Ages.” Not safe either from Michael Graham:
She’s suffered what, for me, would be an unimaginable, unbearable loss. The real news in the Cindy Sheehan story is that there aren’t 1800 more of her standing outside the gates in Crawford.
What I find incomprehensible is that 1800 other mothers and fathers somehow found the strength to bear their loss with dignity and respect for the legacy of their sons. That is a story worth commenting on.
Not Cindy Sheehan. She’s just crazy.