Rosie Sheen Sheehan

Rosie O'Donnell's view has been obscured by the top brass at ABC, and now she will have to find a different vista from which she can divine truth, and dispense her happy bromides. Curiously, a Rosie cohort, Charlie Sheen, is apparently seeing some sort of light at the end of his nose: He admits he might be wrong about the conspiracy-laden 9/11 film, "Loose Change." The good news is that he might have doubts; the bad news is that Rosie, who has also touted the film, has not had such doubts. Change comes slow, no doubt, and change, like wits, can even sometimes come loose.

Stepping into the news to eclipse all this is Cindy Sheehan, the indefatigable anti-war protester who has, apparently, finally tired out. She is heading back to California to reconnect with her remaining children. News has it that she is selling her land (Camp Casey, named for her fallen son) near President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas.

It is hard not to pity Ms. Sheehan. Her own words (found here in her "resignation letter"), which are very much worth reading, are filled with pain. Perhaps the most telling line is the one about her son, who died -- freely -- while serving the American armed forces in Iraq. Ms. Sheehan writes simply, "I failed my boy and that hurts the most." [emphasis mine]

Ms. Sheehan has admitted something to us all in her resignation letter posted at The Daily Kos. She has admitted that the most painful thing is not the Iraq War or partisan duplicity or partisan betrayal. The most painful thing is not even the death of her son. The most painful thing is that she feels she let him down by buying "into the [American] system."

One can only grieve for Ms. Sheehan, for it seems she has not yet had the chance to really grieve. Her cause, her passion, and her many minions kept her, or so I believe, from truly addressing her deepest sorrows. Today, she is finally returning to California to try to restore relations with her surviving children, to try to regain the things she has lost. But what things are those, one might ask, if not the very things that are most valued in the system known as America?

If I was a friend of Ms. Sheehan's and I received a letter from her like the one she posted at The Daily Kos, I would be concerned that my friend was contemplating suicide. I am not her friend, and yet I am still concerned. For it is clear that she feels she failed. If her greatest pain comes when she considers that her failures led to her son's death, then she is not really blaming America or war or Iraq or Democrats or Republicans or even Casey for his death, she's blaming herself.

That is too much for any mother to bear.

Ms. Sheehan strikes me as exhausted and disoriented. Someone needs to get her home, hide her from the world, and give her lots of silence. She should stay away from TVs and radios and newspapers and the Internet; she should be given lots of love, hot tea, and pampering. She needs a long holiday from the world and, perhaps most importantly, her own persona needs to be exorcized. Her resignation letter proves that she teeters on the edge of sanity. Her words are those of a martyred messiah, a snubbed prophet. She sees things better than the rest of us; she knows more than America. That sort of inflated sense of self is not healthy. It is the very stuff of craziness. It is the sound of exhaustion, of collapse.

May God give her the healing and peace she seeks. Let us all pray.

Peace to you.

©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

(A related Contratimes essay, "Weapons of Miss Direction", which addresses Ms. Sheehan's quasi-gnosticism, can be found here.)