Looking the President Straight in the Eye
Why Baseball Players voted for Bush I'd posted this link in reference to Rafael Palmeiro a bit earlier, but I started thinking about it in connection with Cindy Sheehan. Knowing what I know now, it was comforting to see that the President got Kenny Rogers strong left-armed endorsement. If his gaze is so charismatic in a locker room full of muscular athletes, why is the president unwilling to spend a few minutes to look in the eyes of a grieving 48 year old woman?
Some differences between Texas Rangers players and Cindy Sheehan
1) Cindy Sheehan doesn't earn millions of dollars/year
2) She thinks the loss of her son is a bigger priority than more tax breaks
3) Her name does not appear in any book by Jose Canseco
4) She's not being investigated by congress.
5) she registered to vote
This is not a disagreement about policy. It's one about an act of courtesy. To be honest, I was shocked that the president had met with only the families of 274 of those who had died in this war. Considering the fact that he often meets with several at a time, it's fewer hands than you would shake at an average fundraiser. Having served in the armed forces just like G. David Schine, I'm sure the president faced greater dangers in your service than meeting with an unarmed citizen who disagrees with him. She's not expecting a change in policy during the meeting, she's asking for a direct explanation abotu why you committed her son to Iraq.
If he admires and trusts Rafael Palmeiro because he stood up in front of the klieg lights, why can't he do the same for a woman who has? These two incidents together tell me a lot about the quality of our "leadership".
posted by Chancelucky @ 3:55 PM
5 Comments:
Where'd you see that figure about only meeting with 274 families? Seeing as they herd them in like cattle, that's absurdobscene.
I found it on a CBS site claiming it came from the White House. 20 meetings with 974 famiy members....though the figure I saw had the number of dead solider's represented and I remember 274....
Bush did not meet with any families until December of 2003 after he was criticized for not attending funerals.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8941525/site/newsweek/
The Newsweek story does the math...
270 soldiers' families, at some meetings as many as 30 families....
It's made to sound like a lot, but compare it to the typical fundraiser or White House dinner.
I don't know how many families Bush met with, but I do know that one of them was Cindy Sheehan. During this meeting she was respectful to the president, though she changed her own recount of that meeting later. So, I don't think it is germain to analyse the frequency of Bush's meetings with family members relative to the Sheehan complaint. Actually she should consider herself well respected in that he met with her at all according to your statistics. I probably won't be around to read any response to this post so you could send them to steve.cannell@adelphia.com if you wish.
Steve,
thanks for the comment. I looked into the story pretty carefully and Sheehan never did change her account of her one meeting with the President if you dig up the story in the Vacaville newspaper. It's also always seemed strange to me that people would argue that anyone who loses a child gets just one short, very managed meeting with the president. What if you lose a couple? Do you get two meeting? How about if your son or daughter just comes home with a traumatic brain injury as thousands have or a serious case of post-traumatic stress? Do those people just get a nice letter instead of a meeting?
I suppose if you lose an arm, you get a note from the secretary of defense signed by auto-signature since for close to a year Rumsfeld was too lazy to sign the Gold Star letters himself?
Last week, the President himself admitted that he hadn't attended a single funeral for any of the men and women who gave their lives for this country. He claimed that it would be too big a distraction. I have to ask for whom.
btw, I do recommend Karen Meredith's blog http://www.gsmso.blogspot.com/.
She's another gold star mom who talks a bit more personally about how she's worked through both the loss of her son and her questions about the war.
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