[Mb-civic] Sheehan Feeling the Glare of the Spotlight - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

<>Sheehan Feeling the Glare of the Spotlight
Some Are Focusing Anger on Protester

By Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 17, 2005; Page A03

CRAWFORD, Tex., Aug. 16 -- Cindy Sheehan rode into town 10 days ago, a 
forlorn mother with a question for her president: Why did my son die in 
Iraq?

But now the same wave of publicity and political anger that she rode to 
become a nationally known symbol of the antiwar movement threatens to 
crash down on Sheehan herself.

Conservative commentators and Web sites are taking aim at Sheehan with 
the same ferocity she has aimed at President Bush. In part, they are 
using her own words against her -- reciting such controversial comments 
as her vow to refuse to pay taxes to a government waging an "illegal" 
war and her desire to see Bush impeached.

The backlash is becoming a new object lesson in how saturation media 
coverage and the instinct for personal attack are shaping political 
debate. Some independent commentators said the pushback on the right has 
succeeded at scuffing the public sympathy and deference she had earned 
as the mother of a fallen soldier, and has shown how virtually any 
subject relating to the Iraq war and Bush's presidency is viewed through 
a partisan lens.

"Cindy Sheehan has emboldened the progressives who oppose the war and 
caused the conservative diehards who are behind the war to go into a 
defensive mode," said Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers magazine, a 
trade publication for talk radio. "Cindy Sheehan is going to be a 
target, and they'll probably go through her past to find what they can 
to discredit her."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/16/AR2005081601713.html?nav=hcmodule

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