Fair Game or Foul Play?

John Cole is gasket-blowing angry at Michelle Malkin over Michelle's posting of the Sheehan divorce papers. A quick ecosystem check informs me that John and Michelle are the two bloggers most likely to link to my humble abode, so a smarter man would just let this whole thing slide.

I have never been accused of being a smarter man.

First, let me say that Cole has a valid point: Cindy Sheehan's rantings are so prima facie insane that they serve as an automatic discredit to her point (not that you'd get the mainstream media to notice that, by the way.) I agree that it's not necessary to bring her divorce into the picture to show that her message should not be taken seriously and that the left is disgraceful for using her. I further agree that the moral high road, in this case, would be to just let the divorce stuff slide on by.

However, I gotta disagree with both the vehemence of John's points, and his contention that Michelle is due heaping helpings of ridicule and abuse. As Michelle points out, the first person to bring Cindy Sheehan's family into this fracas was none other than Cindy Sheehan. In fact, this whole ordeal is just one long exercise on Sheehan trading on her family relation to her son.

It is perfectly rational that any half-arsed reporter who might be interested in covering anything not directly in front of his nose might take it upon him/herself to wonder what the rest of the family thinks about this. Maybe, they might even think to themselves, "Most kids have two parents. I wonder what Dad thinks about this." In so doing, even a half-arsed reporter would discover that Dad filed for divorce in the midst of all this.

Now, a lot of folks have made the point that that, in and of itself, says nothing. This is not exactly correct. Divorce always says something. It might not say, necessarily, that Patrick divorced Cindy because of this moonbat crusade, but it says something. It's enough, at the very least, to raise an eyebrow. The dumpster-divers at the Associated Press agree:

The husband of Cindy Sheehan, the mother camped outside President Bush's Texas ranch to protest the death of a son in the Iraq war, has filed for divorce, according to court documents.

Patrick Sheehan filed the divorce petition Friday in Solano County court, northeast of San Francisco. His lawyer did not immediately return a call seeking comment Monday.

The article, I will note, provides a lot more commentary than Michelle did.

So, I guess my point is, the story isn't necessary. But it is a story. And it's at least partly of Sheehan's own making. If Sheehan was just another garden variety war-protesting moonbat, she would never be accorded this celebrity. However, she chose to make it novel by dragging herself out to Crawford, setting up "camp Casey" and demand answers on behalf of her son, for questions he never asked. Why did she do these things? The obvious answer is to get her and her family noticed.

Now, she's complaining that her family has gotten noticed. From my perspective, she's making it harder to feel sympathy for her every day that goes by. The right thing to do at this point, as Mark Coffey points out, is to bring this woman home and get her some grief therapy, before she is left with nothing and no one in the world, besides a bunch of political activists who will discard her like an empty soda can when their cause moves on.

UPDATE: John Cole has since offered an unqualified apology for his remarks.

Comments

[Brainster]

I think what made Cole go bonkers was the image of the divorce petition on her post. I do remember at the time thinking that was a little surprising. Maybe Cole didn't check to the next level to find out that the dumpster dived into was the website of Solano County?

What I do find amusing is the absolutely ridiculous notion by Cole that this was not going to be all over the place once it got out. Real nose for news, that guy. ;)

[Shad]

Ah yes, Cole, the useful idiot who defended Durbin's Nazi/Gulag slurs on RedState by calling its readers children, and who defends Sheehan on his own site while claiming that Malkin is "spewing bile" and deserves the vulgar racist and sexist slurs from the left because "she brings this shit on herself."

What a tool. The leftists must love him.

[Blue Neponset]

Hi Leon,

I think you may want to include an update regarding John Cole's rant. Last night he posted an apology.

You can find it here:

http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=5310