"We Call it the Cirque du Soleil Tent ..."

Your corporate media has found a new distraction to keep from explaining to America why Cindy Sheehan thinks she deserves another meeting with BushCo.   At first the corporate narrative was restricted to her grief and giving time to the slime that the Right Wing Noise Machine sent her way.  She was a grieving mother/liberal tool standing in a ditch with a few media-savvy supporters.   That limited context, of course, allowed pro-war protesters to confront her on the equally unassailable moral ground of grief, which they will be doing this Saturday in Crawford after they ride through the west trying to gather support and explaining their determination to send their children to die to liberate foreign lands. 

Cindy, though, stands on the slightly higher ground - ground as yet unexplored by the corporate media - ground mapped by the information exposed in the Downing Street Memos, the Dulfur Report, the 9/11 Commission Report and recently released State Department documents.   She wants to ask why BushCo lied to start a war that killed her son.  She wants him to explain the noble cause that compelled him to betray not only his own oath to defend the Constitution but also the members of the military who have given life and limb to do the same.   Those are questions that the corporate media should have been investigating as the suspicious rush to war began but that kind of reporting would have been un-Corporate American and so they were silent.  Now, three years later, simply explaining that those questions are being asked by a growing number of Americans is verboten and so we get the latest line of distraction from Sheehan's message:  Is a well-funded, comfortable protest, attended by the usual suspects worth discussing seriously?

via Atrios: (emph mine)

Mike Allen on who's at Camp Casey (from Face the Nation):

However, Cindy Sheehan's gone but the camp up here is even bigger. More and more people are coming from around the country. They now have this enormous setup, Camp Casey. Used to be a couple pup tents, now it's this enormous--we call it the Cirque du Soleil tent with eight spikes, catered meals, a Cindy shuttle, a peace shuttle that takes people up and down the mountain.  Right now it's PETA, hippies, Naderites. The question is, if it becomes the Little League dads, Pop Warner moms, then the White House has a big problem.

More and more people are coming from around the country, but they're the wrong kind of people.  Camp Casey is a circus, filled with freaks and all the comforts of home. 

From Elisabeth Bumiller in today's White House Letter:

Ms. Sheehan was not here (she left Crawford on Thursday for Los Angeles to tend to her ailing mother, and is expected back this week), and the gathering had not drawn the thousands as expected. But it still looked like an upscale picnic for hundreds on the hot prairie.

In fact, the well-financed organizers said the same tent had been used the previous week for a fund-raiser at a neighboring ranch, the Broken Spoke, for Mr. Bush and his biggest contributors. "It never came off the truck," said John Wolf, the owner of a stage and scenery company in Dallas who is also a co-founder of the Crawford Peace House, a gathering spot for antiwar protesters in town.

The site was a big step up from Ms. Sheehan's original scruffy roadside spot two miles from the ranch, named Camp Casey for her son, which had drawn the ire of neighbors because of traffic and the crowds. Ms. Sheehan moved late last week after a local landowner, Fred Mattlage, offered her an acre of pastureland closer to the president's ranch.

With $10 to $15 donations pouring in to Ms. Sheehan's Web site (organizers said at one point they were collecting $25,000 a day) the group was able to afford the tent, vans to shuttle people from Crawford, and the services of Ann Spicer, a friend of Mr. Wolf and the owner of an event-planning company in Dallas who was overseeing a makeshift kitchen, complete with two Viking stoves. Ms. Spicer turned out three meals a day for a potential 1,000 guests.

Manicotti and King Ranch chicken casserole were on the menu for dinner on Saturday night; supporters who wanted to stay the night pitched small tents in the shade around the big tent's perimeter. Last night, the folk singer Joan Baez performed a concert.

Diana Bowen, a supporter of Ms. Sheehan, said, "I just couldn't stay away." A retired bookkeeper who had flown in from Salem, Ore., Ms. Bowen was sitting at a table under the tent with Ruth McKinney, a nurse at a veterans hospital in Dallas.

"I just can't stand all these young men being killed," said Ms. McKinney, who described herself as a contributor to MoveOn.org, the advocacy group working with Ms. Sheehan.

It looks like Mike Allen should ask to share Ms. Bumiller's notes.  Who's sending those $10 and $15 donations?  And retired bookkeepers and VA hospital nurses don't sound like the lunatic fringe element he insists comprise Camp Casey.  But the two stenographers are happily on the same page when it comes to letting us know that these protesters are living the good life, eating gourmet food in their shaded tents.   The title of Ms. Bumiller's piece says it all: Tale of 2 Summer Camps.  One sponsored by your tax dollars so that Dear Leader can get some rest between fishing trips, the other sponsored by the advocacy group, MoveOn.org so some sad mothers and their hangers-on can cry about the war between catered meals and "concerts" by Joan Baez.  (video of her and Steve Earle at Truthout, by the way)

Ms. Bumiller didn't mention the workshops in non-violent resistance taught by Rev. Larry Johnson of the Southern Christian Leadership Council (scroll down for video),  which supports Cindy's efforts.  She doesn't mention Military Families Speak Out, MeetWithCindy.org or Code Pink, all of which have been supporting her logistically and financially since the first days of her camp out in that "scruffy" ditch.  She sticks faithfully to MoveOn.org, the bogeyman of the Right Wing Noise Machine.  You can hear those Ketchum Points racking up.

Of course, if Ms. Bumiller or the rest of the corporate media really looked at the groups that support Cindy, they'd have to connect some dots that they'd rather leave unconnected.  MeetWithCindy.org, for instance, is affiliated with the off-limits AfterDowningStreet.org.  Code Pink is an arm of United for Peace and Justice, which, for months before Cindy camped in that ditch, has been planning the annual massive anti-war march for September 24th in D.C.   I wonder how many PETA freaks, hippies and Naderites Mike Allen will see in that crowd.  I guess I'll have to get my "Suburban Mom Against the War" sign ready just for him.

 

Comments

[albert]

thanks for the heads up on the ufp&j march, i was wondering when the next big march/rally was. it looks like i should be able to make it down there for it. it's now on my calendar.

[eRobin]

Cool!! I'm going too. I'll be the one wearing pink ;)

[eRobin]

Oh wait - you're not a PETA member, Naderite, hippy, MoveOn member or under forty fifty are you? Because Mike Allen thinks you'll only discredit the movement and dilute the message if you are.

[Thomas Nephew]

Looks to me like the "White House Press Corpse" gibes are starting to sting a little, and this is the pathetic backlash.

[name stealer]

Cindy who? You mean the bitch in the ditch?