Does suffering make us exploitable?

UPDATE: I’ve written more on this troubling story here.

Drudge has a story up that I find terribly distressing.

I’m a little slow to come to the story. Apparently this woman, Cindy Sheehan, who quite tragically lost a son in Iraq, has been garnering some media attention (and I am certain it has been positive media attention) for keeping vigil in Crawford, Texas while President Bush vacations there. Her stated purpose is to make President Bush come out and talk to her – apparently before cameras and a jeering crowd – about her son’s death.

A vacationing president being called-out by a grieving mother, while operatives from Code Pink and other leftist organizations surround her with signs detailing their agendas. It is a Bush-Haters wet dream. The Fourth Estate’s, too.

We have been talking, on this blog, about the mysterious, transformative power of suffering – and each time we’ve discussed it, whether it be Joe and Victor bringing an intellectualist mien to the subject, or Carol’s simple eloquence, the writers (and I) have ended up solidly on the side of the positive, coming to understand, over and over, that suffering – when it is allowed in, embraced, so to speak – proves itself to be the unveiler of jewels – shows us what strengths and graces we never suspected were gifted to us.

It’s all been kind of innocent and wide-eyed, this look at suffering – even when it has been focused on the searing pain that comes with one dying so young. So often our thoughts about suffering find meaning in St. Paul’s words, “when I am weak, then I am strong.”

We have not talked about how suffering can be transformative in the negative, even though there is ample evidence around us that this is so. We have seen it in families where the father has been replaced by the social worker, and we have seen it in countless stories of men or women, jilted in love and unable to accept it, destroying the object of their desire.

It seems, sadly, that if this Drudge story is accurate we may be seeing that same negative transformation here, as well Or, perhaps a woman who has lost her beloved son and who is vulnerable in grief (as are we all) is simply being exploited by others who had an agenda and a script – but who needed the credibility of a grieving mother to give them voice and movement and “poignancy.”

Anger is one of the “steps” one lands on when one is trying to work one’s way through grief. If one is having a rough time working through it, fighting the grief, fighting the pain, refusing – so to speak – to live through it, one becomes enormously vulnerable and will latch on to any feeling that will seem to make the pain go away, or, perhaps to make the pain feel “unwasted.”

It would seem that Mrs. Sheehan – whom I can’t gainsay, because I cannot begin to imagine her pain – may perhaps have been plucked, in her vulnerabilty, as a ripe apple for the left’s endless banquet of hate. If Drudge story is correct we may be witnessing the terrible exploitation of a mother’s grief, a grief which is sacred, for a bit of political theatre in a slow news month.

I hope President Bush does not cave in to the pressure the press and the left will apply, to make him “come out” and be ambushed in public.

More importantly, I hope the press can find some shred of decency within itself and stop being party to the naked manipulation and exploitation of a mother in deep sorrow. I hope. I pray that the press can find it in themselves to take this evidence that this woman is simply parroting a script and refuse to aid in her exploitation.

But I am not going to hold my breath.

On the other hand, if the Drudge report is right, someone on the left did not do their homework, did not “vet” this woman properly – missed a bit of discrediting evidence. In which case, they’ll just go shamelessly scrounge up another aching soul who does not know where to put her pain, and begin to parade her around.

What a terrible shame. It is also, in a way, insideous, because the folks behind this theatre have triangulated the president: If he does not meet her, “he is a creep.” If he meets her privately, he is a “coward” and this woman, Mrs. Sheehan can come out and say anything she likes about their meeting with no one able to prove her wrong. If the president meets her outside, amid a crowd of people who literally hate him, he is a schmuck who can be manipulated and who is then at the mercy of cameras and editors.

This is not how you treat the American President, no matter who he is. And yes, I’d say the exact same thing if Bush had a D after his name. Some things you simply do not do.

UPDATE: Hmmm…I’m afraid that after seeing this picture and reading Mrs. Sheehan’s remarks via Air America, I am somewhat flabbergasted. Some are suggesting she has displaced rage. Perhaps. This seems like it goes beyond mere venom, though. And…sadly…it does seem the press has chosen her for its “It” girl.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has more thoughts, as does KMG, a marine with a son currently stationed in Iraq. And while we’re talking Marines, Roger L. Simon shares a picture of Marine Second Lt Gabriel Ledeen son of Michael Ledeen, who is headed Eastward. Godspeed to them all, I say.

UPDATE: I’ve written more on this troubling story, here.

WELCOME Michelle Malkin readers! While you’re here, please nose around. In the last 24 hours, we’ve been talking about Military Morale, Comics and Condoms in Canada, and we’ve been wondering why it’s “so wrong” to ask voters to provide proof of ID.