Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch
Richard Nixon wandered into an anti-war crowd once. Quite celebrated as how he reached out to those he disagreed with by Nixon supporters — somewhat hyperbolically. He… um… chatted to the group of college students and college-aged about… um… college football. Reportedly. A bit clueless, or a bit of a generation gap he could not heel. I don’t know. He did appear on Laugh-In, so all can be forgiven.
Herbert Hoover had a way with war-protesters. Or, rather World War I veterans protesting for their army compensation. (Wanting them early, as per the desperate economic climate of the time.) What he did was call in Douglas MacArthur to tear gas them and roll them over with tanks. It didn’t go over too well with the public.
At the moment, Cindy Sheehan sits outside Bush’s “ranch” in Crawford, Texas, question in hand “What is the noble cause my son died for?” Public opinion forced him out to answer the question — him choosing to answer something else entirely “Bring the Troops Home Now.” Meanwhile, Bill O’Rielly states that Cindy Sheehan has fallen in with the most radical left-wing elements of this country (“All you have to do is look at michaelmoore.com!”) and we’re off and running.
The scene in Crawford, as described effusively on liberal talk radio and in blogosphere, actually reminds me of something jarringly — the scene outside the hospital where Terri Schiavo was being retained several months back. The people who have hitched their wagons over to Crawford describe it in sort of psuedo-spiritual terms. I suppose the problem here is that I could say the same thing about the going-ons outside the Michael Jackson trial. As per Terri Schiavo and George Bush — somehow the idea of protesting outside the vacation-splot of the most powerful figurehead in the free-ish world strikes me as more noble than the hospital where a woman in a vegetative state sits (alongside many sick people) against — her husband, I guess.