Cindy Sheehan

Press Ignores Gold Star Mom Demanding, and Getting, an Apology from Gen. Dempsey
By Tom Blumer | April 21, 2015 | 11:13 PM EDT

A decade ago, a Gold Star Mom who had lost her son in Iraq gained national attention when she staged a protest against the Iraq War near George W. Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas. Leftist PR flaks took control of Cindy Sheehan's every move, keeping her in the headlines for months on end as a symbol of supposedly strong opposition to the war which toppled Saddam Hussein. In August 2005, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote that "the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute."

Yet Dowd and the rest of her fellow travelers in the establishment press have almost completely ignored, by their definition, the "absolute moral authority" of Gold Star Mom Debbie Lee, whose son Marc "was the first Navy SEAL who sacrificed his life in Ramadi, Iraq (on) Aug 2, 2006." Lee wrote a scathing letter to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Martin Dempsey after the general's insensitve contention that, in essence, the fact that Ramadi is in danger of falling to the Islamic State is not particularly important.

Bozell Column: The Vanishing Anti-War Left
By Brent Bozell | September 3, 2013 | 11:24 PM EDT

Barack Obama ran for president as the last of the red-hot pacifists, so it might have sounded preposterous to predict that after a few security briefings at the White House, President Obama would follow in the same policy footsteps of horrid warmonger George Bush, with his anti-terrorist wars and strategies.

So where is the anti-war movement now?

Orwell Calling: Roseanne Running for President on the 'Peace and Freedom Party' Line?
By Tim Graham | August 3, 2012 | 1:14 PM EDT

Fresh from her "hate tweets" saying Chick-fil-A eaters deserve a premature death from cancer, Roseanne Barr is revving up her presidential ambitions again. Fox News reports "Roseanne Barr is joining up with activist Cindy Sheehan for a new run at the White House."

Roseanne's presidential website now actively advocates her campaign for the "Peace and Freedom Party," which  "is committed to socialism, democracy, ecology, feminism and racial equality."

MSNBC: Leaning Left for 15 Long Years - A Year-by-Year Video Retrospective
By Geoffrey Dickens | July 7, 2011 | 10:13 AM EDT

Tonight MSNBC's cast and crew will gather in Washington D.C. to celebrate their network being on the air for 15 long years. In that time its hosts, reporters and guests have attacked conservatives and Republicans on everything from impeaching Bill Clinton and conducting a war on terrorism, up to the fight over public unions. All the while some of its reporters and hosts have been thrilled by the likes of Mikhail Gorbachev and Barack Obama.

For that entire 15 years MRC analysts have been dutifully watching and noting these often outrageous outbursts of leftism from NBC News' cable outlet.

The following collection of the worst MSNBC quotes, year-by-year, is just a sampling of the Lean Forward network's decade-and-a-half long devotion to advancing the cause of liberalism under the guise of journalism.

(video compilation after the jump)

Cindy Sheehan Thinks 'Empire' Faked Osama Takedown: Will Chris Matthews Recant Urging Her to Run for Congress?
By Tim Graham | May 3, 2011 | 8:29 AM EDT

Remember back in 2005, when the major media turned Cindy Sheehan into their anti-Bush heroine of the moment? They never seemed to notice her statements made her sound like a very anti-American radical fruitcake. On August 15, 2005 (video here), Sheehan went on Hardball and told Chris Matthews the U.S. was using Iraq "as a base for spreading imperialism." An impressed Matthews suggested: "You sound more informed than most U.S. Congresspeople, so maybe you should run."

So perhaps Matthews will retract his statement and debate her on air, because Cindy Sheehan is now a "deather," insisting that the "Empire" faked their Sunday victory over Osama bin Laden. This is not a leg-thrill moment for Matthews. The Washington Post noticed at the very bottom of a Tuesday story by Emily Wax on page C7 this note from Sheehan’s Facebook page:

Gainor Column: Now the Media Support a President Waging Another War In the Middle East
By Dan Gainor | April 2, 2011 | 9:13 AM EDT

Where have all the war protesters gone, long time passing?

They’re mostly backing Obama’s attack on Libya or at least keeping quiet so they don’t aid those evil conservatives intent on criticizing the president. More moderate lefties had once promised a third way. Now we find out that was a typo. It’s not a third way, it’s a third war.

President Obama, who was swept in on a tide of anti-war sentiment and anger over GOP spending, is now running yet another unpopular war and spending more than any president in history. If the GOP tried this, the news media would beat them with their microphones. But because it’s the president with journalists in his back pocket, there is little controversy.

It wasn’t so long ago that Code Pinkers were the darlings of journalism. You could find them across the media landscape. The Washington Post had lovingly huge features on them titled “Protesting for Peace With a Vivid Hue and Cry; Code Pink's Tactics: Often Theatrical, Always Colorful.” “Bring the troops home,” that 2007 story ended. Four years later, we know no one on the left really wanted to send the troops home. They just wanted to send Bush home.

Or there was the Code Pink protester confronting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a Capitol Hill hearing. As The Post described it, “an antiwar protester shouted ‘War criminal!’ and waved blood-colored hands in her face.” Who hasn’t seen that picture? The news ran that so often it was like they got royalties. (News outlets are desperate for cash these days.)

Matthews Special 'Rise of the New Right' Pretty Much What You'd Expect
By Lachlan Markay | May 28, 2010 | 4:03 PM EDT
A promo for a new Chris Matthews special on the "Rise of the New Right" is pretty much what you'd expect: Rand Paul, 9/11 Truther Alex Jones, and lots of militiamen shooting guns. That is the doctrinaire leftist snapshot of the Tea Party movement, so it stands to reason that Matthews will extrapolate it into some dire warning about our political future.

"There is a rising tide on the right," Matthews's ominously declares. "The tea party is determined to take power, what does that mean for America?" A claim by a militiaman that "the government's too big" is immediately followed by gunshots - a not too subtle way to paint Americans who favor less government (a majority, by the way) as extremists ala the infamous Hutaree Militia.

The promo opens with Rand Paul's "message from the Tea Party: we've come to take our government back." Paul's recent gaffe - he said he would not have voted for Title II of the Civil Rights Act - will probably give Matthews an easy segue into discussion of the horrible racists that make up the movement. The presence of Alex Jones suggests that Matthews will try to paint Tea Partiers as conspiracy theorists as well (video below the fold).
Video Shows Media Hypocrisy Concerning Right-wing Hate Speech
By Noel Sheppard | March 31, 2010 | 12:32 PM EDT

As NewsBusters has been reporting, you can't turn on the television or open up a newspaper these days without coming across a piece about extreme right-wing hate speech and/or the supposed violence being stoked by Tea Parties.

During such reports, the so-called journalist involved acts like demonstrations of this sort are somehow new and have taken on inflammatory rhetoric never before seen in this country.

To disprove such blatantly bad reporting, conservative writer Evan Coyne Maloney has put together a marvelous video and essay chronicling some of the protests of the previous decade, and what some attendees were saying and carrying in their hands (video embedded below the fold, vulgarity alert, h/t Power Line):

On Hardball: Dems to Turn Joe Wilson into Sheehan-like 'Clownish Figure of Ridicule'
By Geoffrey Dickens | September 10, 2009 | 6:53 PM EDT

You know Cindy Sheehan's star has really fallen with the liberal media when the likes of Mike Barnicle, compare her to GOP Congressman Joe "You lie!" Wilson. On Thursday's "Hardball," Barnicle, substitute hosting for Chris Matthews, declared, "Democrats hope to turn Wilson into the Cindy Sheehan of the anti-health care reform movement. A clownish figure of ridicule who hurts his own side, more than he helps." As the MRC's Brent Baker noted, now that she is opposing a Democratic president, the media have turned on Sheehan.

The following is from Barnicle's opening to the September 10 edition of "Hardball":

Sheehan More Consistent Than Media: She Protests Bush and Obama, Media Only Bush
By Brent Baker | August 31, 2009 | 11:14 AM EDT
On a Sunday evening in August four summers ago the NBC Nightly News devoted its “In Depth” segment to how Cindy Sheehan was “single-handedly bringing the Iraq debate to Mr. Bush’s doorstep” with her protest in Crawford, Texas. But Sunday night this year, after Sheehan departed Martha's Vineyard without earning any network media coverage as President Barack Obama's wrapped up his vacation there, NBC's Ron Allen began a story: “Hours before President Obama's vacation ended, he treated his girls to ice cream and candy -- the kind of family time the President said he had in mind for the week on Martha's Vineyard. A chance, friends say, to renew himself.”
    
A week ago, a MRC Media Reality Check asked: “Will Nets Note Sheehan's Anti-Obama Protest? Media Embraced Cindy Sheehan's Anti-Bush Push in 2005; ABC Anchor Now Says: 'Enough Already.'” (NB posting) The answer: No. Though she spent four days on the island and held an event on Thursday right next to the media set up in the Oak Bluffs School, her anti-Obama efforts were ignored by all the networks (cable too) as well as major newspapers.
Reality Check: Will Nets Notice Sheehan's Anti-Obama Protest?
By Brent Baker | August 24, 2009 | 3:37 PM EDT

Media Embraced Cindy Sheehan's Anti-Bush Push in 2005; ABC Anchor Now Says: "Enough Already"

When Cindy Sheehan arrives on Martha’s Vineyard tomorrow (Tuesday), to protest against President Barack Obama, will the news media be as drawn to her as they were in the summer of 2005 when she was condemning George W. Bush?

Last week, ABC anchor Charles Gibson declared “enough already” when asked on Chicago’s WLS Radio about Sheehan’s plan to travel to Obama’s island vacation spot to protest the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. When she camped near Bush’s Crawford, Texas ranch four years ago, that was hardly the view of Gibson and his colleagues. At the time, NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell aptly dubbed her “a media magnet.”

Back then, the networks were eager to publicize her cause from the moment she arrived. Katie Couric, for instance, showcased Sheehan at the top of NBC’s Today show: “A mother’s vigil. Her son died in Iraq. Now this woman is camping outside the Bushes’ Texas ranch and demanding a meeting with the President today, Monday, August 8th, 2005.”

Flashback: When Gibson was Enthralled by Cindy Sheehan
By Brent Baker | August 20, 2009 | 5:22 PM EDT
As Noel Sheppard noted earlier today in picking up from the Washington Examiner's Byron York how ABC World News anchor Charles Gibson declared “enough already” when asked on Chicago's WLS Radio (audio) about Cindy Sheehan's plan to travel to President Barack Obama's Martha's Vineyard vacation spot next week to protest the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. York observed how “that's a remarkably different stance from the one Gibson took four years ago” when he was co-host of Good Morning America. Specifically, York recalled:
On August 9, 2005, the ABC anchor conducted an extensive on-air interview with Sheehan. “Cindy Sheehan is her name,” Gibson began. “She says she's not moving until the President meets with her, and I had a chance to speak with her a few minutes ago. Cindy Sheehan, bottom line, what do you hope to accomplish with all this?”

During the next week, Gibson and ABC continued to cover Sheehan. On August 17, 2005, when Sheehan left Crawford, Gibson reported, “We're going to turn next to the standoff that is playing out near President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas. Cindy Sheehan, you know, the mother who lost a son in Iraq, is now on the move, but she's still standing her ground. ABC's Geoff Morrell is in Crawford with the details…” The next day, Gibson reported, “All across the country last night, people held candlelight vigils in support of Cindy Sheehan…”