Larry Northern vs. Cindy Sheehan

On Monday, Aug. 15, Larry Northern, a neighbor of George W. Bush's in Crawford, TX, reportedly drove though a memorial that had been erected at "Camp Casey" -- the working name of Ms. Sheehan's encampment. The memorial was a field of white crosses, each bearing the name of a soldier killed in Iraq.

The left, already hard at work making Ms. Sheehan a True Democratic Icon (TM), are now working on making this encounter a perfect "Us vs. Them" tableau. One fine example here: Paul Begala writing at TPMCafe.

Notice that Begala uses the presence of crosses as a sign that the liberals are now turning to faith. Notice that a mom who lost one of her children in an occupation he chose is someone who has "given everything". Notice that Mr. Northern is a "right-wing thug" and a "gun nut."

I rate this frame F. Here's why:

• It is a false belief that you can identify a liberal or a conservative by the symbols he or she associates with. There are Democrats who love NASCAR, who shop at Wal-Mart, and who love guns (Paul Hackett, Howard Dean, and John Kerry are among them).
  
• Who among us when faced by people we don't know co-opting a symbol near and dear to our hearts for a cause we don't agree in doesn't long to take that symbol back?
  
• Sheehan didn't react this way when encountering the same separation. There's the story of the soldier who came to confront her and after a private chat ended up hugging her.
  

Suggestions for improvement:

Let's honor her struggle. We have questions we want answers to too. Some of them may be her questions, but not all of them. It's not up to her to get the answers for all of us. Let's keep asking our questions in the most articulate, effective way we can and we may discover that we have more in common with the Larry Northerns of the world than we might have imagined.