Merrilee Carlson Deserves Her Time In The Spotlight Too

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
–Voltaire

Without going back and digging through my own posts about Cindy Sheehan, I’m sure when she first arrived on the scene last summer in Crawford, Texas, I thought she was kind of nifty. I figured as long as she was participating in peaceful, anti-war protest she was doing a good thing and I pretty much backed her.

I’m all for Freedom of Speech. I mean, I have my limits of what’s good taste and what’s appropriate. I’m from the “harm none” mentality and also the “you don’t wear jeans to church” crowd.

So, anyway, I don’t recall if what I’ve said about Cindy here. I haven’t exactly agreed with everything she’s said or done in public and let’s face it, she’s said and done some real doseys. I think she makes us serious liberals look like “moonbats”, but I will defend her right to say what she believes as long as it isn’t gay bashing, sexist, racist, or otherwise outright hateful.

And I don’t believe that liberals are the only ones with a right to Freedom of Speech either.

Merrilee Carlson also lost her son in Iraq, but unlike Cindy Sheehan, her name hasn’t become a household name and she hasn’t been making the rounds of late night talk shows or public press events. Yet, she has her own message and her own organization and she’s been trying to get the word out. Merrilee Carlson believes that “we have to take a step back and look at what we have asked our military to do. We have asked them to do a job. It doesn’t matter how we got there. The fact is we are there and we have a job to finish.”
O.K. So I don’t agree with her message exactly. I understand it. I understand where she’s coming from. I understand why she feels that way even, but I don’t agree. However, I do think she has as much a right as Cindy Sheehan to make her message known. Starting last August and September, when Cindy started making headlines, Merrilee started to feel the need to balance things out, to “correct the record”. After all, her opinion is just as justified and right as Cindy’s.

In the last couple of weeks the organization that Carlson chairs, Minnesota Families United, has been in the center of a controversy that, by any objective reasoning, should have made national news.

Minnesota Families United teamed with Progress for America Voter Fund and produced two television spots. Minnesota was used as a test market for the spots and PFA made a rather large statewide television buy. The ABC affiliate in the Twin Cities market, KSTP, refused to air the spots.

The decision not to air the first MFU commercial was made by Rob Hubbard, General Manager. His objection was over two lines in the spot:

1) The media only reports the bad news, but American troops are making real progress
2) You would never know it from the news reports, but our enemy in Iraq is Al Qaeda.

Hubbard’s position was that those lines did not apply to his television station; therefore, he would not allow the spot to run. Hubbard says he would have run the spot if they edited it to make it clear they were talking about the media in general, but not KSTP specifically.

It is certainly understandable that Hubbard is worried his viewers might get the wrong impression. After all, the reason these spots were produced in the first place is that these families of our fallen heroes believe millions have gotten the wrong impression regarding the progress our soldiers have made in Iraq. Still, the question remains: Do these families deserve to have their voices heard, or should they be stifled?

This debate is not happening, because this story never made national news. To recap: In an election year, a group used Minnesota as a test market for a possible national buy and one of the prominent stations took the position that the spot should not air. Maybe this didn’t become news because of the hypocrisy of the industry. They often try their best to protect themselves from the type of stories they inflict on others.

The news hook gets better.

On Thursday, February 16th, the Chair of the Democrat Party in Minnesota called on all TV stations to pull the ad. The top Democrats in Minnesota want to suppress the message of Carlson’s group.

Merrilee Carlson was born and raised a Democrat. She doesn’t like politics and she wants to make it clear that her group is non-political. So, the Democrats in Minnesota are trying to suppress the message from mainstream families who have suffered the loss of their children from the war in Iraq. Why is this not news?

That other mom was a full-time, anti-war protester for more than a year before she came up with the PR stunt to go to Crawford during the president’s vacation. The media accepted the stunt and gave her message enormous coverage. This prompted Carlson to take action for her message. Now Carlson is in the middle of legitimate news and the media is silent. [“Pro-military mom silenced by mainstream media” (Townhall.com)]

A Google search of Merrilee Carlson brought up precious little than a few opinion articles about the above issue and this article about the death of Sgt. Michael Carlson — o.k. 29,100 links. In comparison, I could look at about 9,770,000 different links on Cindy Sheehan if I had the time and interest.
Anyway, I find it fascinating that Democrats are campaigning to keep her commercial from airing. Yet another disappointment from that party and proof that they’re all alike. I find it interesting that she is a Democrat to begin with. I also find it terribly fascinating that I found this violation of an American’s Civil Rights on not one of the liberal blogs I read but on the most right-wingingest blog I read.

Anyway, go check out Merrilee’s website and watch her commercial, whether you agree with her or not.

Tags: Merrilee Carlson, Cindy Sheehan, politics, Freedom of Speech, anti-war, pro-military, Iraq, grieving mother, Minnesota Families United, Democrats

Anti-Anti-War Protestor Violence

Has anyone else noticed that all of the violence in Crawford by protestors has been from people protesting the anti-war protestors?

A few weeks ago Larry Northern used his pickup truck to run over the mini-memorial of crosses to represent fallen soldiers in Iraq. Then Larry Mattlage grew annoyed with the crowds and fired shots into the air on his nearby property.

Now that Crawford is full of protestors protesting the anti-war protestors as well, there’s bound to be even more trouble like yesterday’s incident:

In one heated moment, members of the pro-Bush crowd turned on what they mistakenly thought were a group of anti-war protesters, cursing them, threatening them and tearing down their signs. A police officer rushed the group to safety. [“Bush warns of more sacrifice in Iraq, protesters rally” (Reuters)]

Meanwhile, all you hear from the Camp Casey is news interviews and requests to meet with the protestors protesting them to head off these sorts of incidents. Pretty funny when you consider that the bleeding heart liberals are always accused of violent protests.

I really feel as though if the right-wing would just ignore Sheehan, she’d fade away. Well, perhaps if they’d ignored her in the beginning, she would have. Now with every protest against Sheehan, they are giving her more publicity and more sympathy from the dissatisfied public. As long as she’s seen as a victim, they give her power and continuously attacking her only feeds that.

Tags: pro-war, protestors, anti-war, pro-Bush, Cindy Sheehan

Cindy Sheehan: No More Taxes

So, here’s the deal. This has been bothering me for a couple of days.

There have been rumors circling the web about Cindy Sheehan announcing that she wouldn’t pay taxes to a government that sent her son to die. I haven’t seen this reported on CNN.com, Yahoo!News, ABC News, etc. O’Reilly mentioned it in passing last night and I’ve seen it mentioned on World Net Daily, which appears to be some sort of conservative tabloid-like propoganda e-zine. I even checked out her blog on Michael Moore’s website. The most “credible” is a transcript of her speech for Veterans For Peace’s 2005 convention earlier this month.

Another thing that I’m doing is - - my son was killed in 2004, so I’m not paying my taxes for 2004. If I get a letter from the IRS, I’m gonna say, you know what, this war is illegal; this is why this war is illegal. This war is immoral; this is why this war is immoral. You killed my son for this. I don’t owe you anything. And if I live to be a million, I won’t owe you a penny.

And I want them to come after me, because unlike what you’ve been doing with the war resistance, I want to put this frickin’ war on trial. And I want to say, “You give me my son, and I’ll pay your taxes.:”Veterans For Peace(Cindy Sheehan’s speach at the 2005 convention)”: http://www.veteransforpeace.org/convention05/sheehan_transcript.htm

As much as I respect what she’s doing in Crawford, as much as I respect what she’s become a symbol of, this is wrong.

Seriously, that’s just wrong.

I mean, that tax money goes to lots of things, not just the war.

Granted, I wish the IRS would let me select where I want my money to go like United Way does. I mean, if I had my way, my tax money like my United Way money would be going to Community Services, specifically to Food Banks and the like. Really, I think if the government let people specify the people in charge might be suprised what the people thought was worthy of spending money on.

Then again, it might be like college all over again. Alumni, you know, are more likely to donate to the athletic program of most colleges than new buildings for educational purposes. Maybe if people got to pick where their money went when they did their taxes, I’d be surprised.

Anyway, the point is that not paying taxes isn’t like withholding your rent because your landlord won’t fix the radiator — though I think you can still go to jail or get fined for that too. That money is necessary for the government to run and you may think that your piddly amount won’t be missed but schools, social services, etc. are seriously underfunded. Even the war apparently is underfunded…at least the part where our troops are well-outfitted and their vehicles are properly armored. Every cent counts.

Granted, I still have some admiration for her, but she’s a little more tinged today than yesterday in my eyes.

Tags: Cindy Sheehan, stupidity, protestors

Why Is Flip-flopping a Sin?

Some of the blog’s posting about Cindy Sheehan have got me thinking about something that bugged the shit out of me last year (about this time too): When did it become a sin to change your mind?

I mean, the Republicans spent a lot of time calling John Kerry a “flip-flopper” and having little rallies outside Kerry’s campaign stops where they all held up actual flip-flops and waved them in the air like good little bots. There was a lot of talk about how John Kerry supported the war in Iraq and had “flip-flopped” and how we can’t trust a man who doesn’t stick with his convictions.

There’s talk now about how Cindy Sheehan said or thought one thing when she and her husband met with President Bush last year and that it was completely different from what she’s saying now. The Republicans and their followers seem to think this is a horrendous crime.

In both of those examples, what the Republicans don’t want the public to realize is that both people made up their minds originally with one set of data at their disposal and as time past, new data was uncovered and this caused them to rethink their stands on things.

I certainly don’t see anything wrong with changing your mind in light of new information and facts. I don’t think we should stubbornly stick to our original belief until our dying day despite any conflicting evidence.

If I’d done that I’d still believe in the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, aliens, the Boogeyman and other make-believe creatures from my childhood. I’d probably still believe that Capital Punishment is wrong (now I’m undecided). I’d believe that aliens crashed at Roswell. I’d believe that as a woman, it’s my duty to get married and reproduce. I’d believe that role-playing games were the tools of Satan. I would never have been friends with PW again. I would never have dated BJ. I would never have dated JB the second time around or broken up with him again. I wouldn’t have changed my major from Mechanical Engineering to Computer Science. I would never have learned from my college experiences to open my mind and be more accepting and less judgemental (if you think I’m judgemental now… :p). Certainly I never would have believed that I could be an independent, single woman living alone and like it.

That’s a lot of mind changing, a lot of growing up, and a lot of discovery.

I imagine that Cindy Sheehan has gone through a lot of discovery this last year. I imagine that while grieving for her son, she began to question why he had to die. Bush led this country to believe that we would make the world a better place by invading Iraq and putting a stop to Sadaam’s giant hoard of weapon’s of mass destruction. The Bush Administration stirred this country up into a wild patriotic huricane and sent out sons, brothers, daughter, sisters, fathers, mothers, and friends off to war believing we were doing the right and noble thing.

But in the last year or so, even Bush and his Administration have been doing some flip-flopping. When no WMD were found, the reason we went to war changed in the rhetoric as if we were not supposed to noticed. We now are fighting for Iraq’s freedom from a tyrrant…and then little hints of things many of us long suspected began to trickle into the media — the Downing Street Memos among others.

I imagine that Cindy began to feel very angry considering her son had gone off to war thinking he was doing a noble and just thing and now the reasons were a little more hazy and tainted. I imagine that I’d change my mind too.

I imagine that’s why John Kerry changed his mind about the war. I imagine Congressmen change their minds a lot as bills and admendments come and go and change within hours.

I like to think it’s an admirable trait to change your mind when faced with new information and life’s experiences. Otherwise, what a boring carboard world we’d live in.

So, why do the Republicans think it’s such a sin? I don’t understand. I’d be happy to explore the philosophy behind it, if someone wants to explain.

Interestingly, a lot of Americans are exercising their right to change their minds. I remember when being against the war in Iraq meant being in a small minority but now polls show more than 50% of Americans think we never should have gone.

Hmmmm…some other big flip-flops:

• After years of isolationism, America decided to enter WWII.
• President Wilson originally didn’t want to give women the right to vote.

You know, I’ve always disliked those tacky little shoes, but I might go out tonight and buy a pair of flip-flops…just on principle.

Tags: flip-flopping, John Kerry, Cindy Sheehan, George W. Bush, Republicans, politics

Winning Friends & Influencing People

The American Spectator certainly knows how to win friends and influence people.

Crocodile Tears
By Christopher Orlet
Published 8/12/2005 12:06:48 AM

Cindy Sheehan has now been squatting in a roadside ditch near President Bush’s Crawford, Texas ranch since August 6. And every day more aging hippies, professional grievance-mongers, and underemployed liberal arts majors show up with their backpacks and banjos to join her. Squatting in ditches, sleeping in pup tents, and sitting around a campfire at night yodeling “This Land Is Your Land” is after all the anti-war protesters idea of nirvana.

I just don’t understand why anyone in either party feels the need to resort to regularly insulting anyone who doesn’t agree with their political views. Politics is the new racism, isn’t it? Just remember the old cliche: You get more flies with honey. Maybe if people on both sides of the fence started treating each other with respect and common courtesy, we might find some middle ground to meet on…but then I suspect there are a number of loud mouth rebel-rousers that don’t want anyone meeting in the middle. What then would they have to rally about? Who would be listening?

Tags: Cindy Sheehan, George W. Bush, politics, protestors, mud-slinging

A Conservative Wrote My Feelings

To be honest, I haven’t said anything about Cindy Sheehan here simply because it seemed like everyone else was talking about her and so many liberals had already voiced how I felt and expressed it in much better words that I think I could have.

Just in case you didn’t know, I deeply respect Cindy, her courage and her dedication. I wish that I could believe that if I were in her position, I would be sitting there in her chair. I’m not even sure I’m brave enough to be one of those who’ve joined her — I keep thinking of practical things like paying my bills and keeping my job and quite frankly I think what Cindy is doing is far more important. It’s about time someone started trying to get the President’s attention to let him know that maybe things aren’t going as well as his minions are telling him. Quite frankly, I think she’s amazing, a heroine, a role model, and apparently I’m not alone — just look at all the people who have been brave enough to join her. Those people are my heroes too. Without people like them, nothing would ever change.

CNN.com - Bush motorcade passes anti-war mom’s protest - Aug 12, 2005
CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) — President Bush’s motorcade, en route to a political fund-raiser near his ranch, passed Friday by the site of Cindy Sheehan’s Iraq war protest where more than 100 people had gathered to support her.

Sheehan — whose son, Casey, was killed five days after he arrived in Iraq last year at age 24 — held a sign that read: “Why do you make time for donors and not for me?”

I bring this up because I found this post at Brilliant at Breakfast written by a conservative and it so eloquently expressed my feelings about Cindy and those who want to discredit her. I’m so tired of seeing conservative right-wingers who just regurgitate rhetoric and propoganda who can’t do anything more than quote Rush and O’Reilly as their arguments for why they are right and anyone who doesn’t agree is wrong. I’m tired of seeing people on both sides of the party line who refuse to look at the big picture and realize that when you select your party on your voter registration, you aren’t signing your mind over to political brainwashing. No one is going to take your voters’ rights away if you say something bad about your party, it’s current platform, or even it’s head honcho. You are not betraying your party if you read or hear some fact that doesn’t agree with what you’ve been told. I’m tired of people ignoring facts that don’t fit with what they want to believe.

Anyway, here’s the post that made me think there is hope…a liberal and a conservative agreeing on something — we might be o.k. afterall…

-THE CUNNING REALIST-: Decency Is Not In Them

Even when something really outrages me, usually that outrage gives way to a bit of calm, measured thinking. With the Cindy Sheehan story, that’s not the case.

If one needed any further proof that this incarnation of “Republicans” and alleged conservatives includes a faction that has gone completely and tragically over the edge, the smear campaign against Cindy Sheehan is it. For those who might not be familiar with the details of this and are looking for an accurate, factual account, a good summary appears here.

The essence of the right-wing smear machine’s “outing” of Cindy Sheehan is her supposed flip-flop from supporting President Bush in 2004 to disapproving of him in 2005. As details of this have become clearer, it’s obvious the flip-flop is nothing more than a canard. But setting aside the Sheehan story for a moment, have any of the shameless smearsters seen the public opinion polls recently? Here’s some breaking news for them: a whole lot of Americans who supported Bush a year ago—including an increasingly large part of his “base”—have turned against him. And that includes many millions of people who haven’t lost a parent, child, or sibling in Iraq.

There are so many side issues of shamelessness and crass opportunism in this story it makes my head spin. Think about the gall of a political and media machine “accusing” a private citizen of changing her mind (imagine that!) about an elected and supposedly accountable public official. When did a private citizen supposedly changing her opinion about something rise to the same level as a flip-flop about firing anyone involved in the leaking a CIA agent’s name? At what point did the ability to change one’s mind about a politician become something to be ridiculed and accused of instead of cherished as a basic right? And it’s not as if in the past year we haven’t learned anything about the pre-war manipulation of intelligence, as well as the incompetent planning, that resulted in the death of Cindy Sheehan’s son and thousands of others like him.

Something else about this story that infuriates me is the vision of feckless, smarmy smearsters and cowards hiding behind keyboards in cities like Washington and New York (and yes, Miami), punching out electronic missives in a pathetic and desperate attempt to impugn the integrity of a woman sitting in the dust and August heat of Texas—a woman who, along with her dead son, embodies everything that’s right about this country. The growing division between the professional class of spinning punditry and the vast expanse of Middle America that actually does the working, the fighting and the dying so the pundits can spend their time chattering has never been more clear than with this story.

If I had lost a parent, child or sibling in Iraq, I’d be right next to Cindy Sheehan sitting in that dust and heat. And I wouldn’t budge until the president—ensconced within that reassuring bubble of faith, brush-clearing and mountain bike-riding—found a few moments to come listen to me. I hope as many people as possible join her protest and offer her food, water, and whatever legal or media assistance she may need.

In the meantime, it behooves the rest of us to do our part and engage in some “outing” of our own. That includes identifying and relentlessly shaming those who have become so unmoored from morality that not only have they abandoned the uniquely American ideals of accountability and sacrifice, they openly ridicule them.

Amen.

Tags: Cindy Sheehan, anti-war, protestors, politics, George W. Bush, Iraq, mud-slinging