I feel like the controversey over the MoveOn ad echoes Battered Wife Syndrome.
The stance is that it’s only because the ad was so outlandish that the war supporters made an issue of it. The pun on Petraeus’s name was a dirty trick. If the anit-war movement would only avoid indulgences like this, they could have a place in the public discourse. Until then, they’ll always be on the defensive, always under attack. They just have to keep getting better.
Bullshit. I am convinced that the war’s supporters were determined to find something, anything, to distract from what’s really happening in Iraq. MoveOn gave them something, but if they didn’t, they would find someone else. They’re not going to get a fair shake, and they know it.
As a veteran of the pro-life movement I’m familiar with this. Please let there be no clinic bombings. Purge any trace of sexism from our rhetoric. Make sure that we stress the services pro-life groups offer to women is crisis pregnancies. Be sure not to invoke God or religion, either. If we do all this, maybe we’ll be taken seriously. Maybe we won’t be dismissed as sexist jerks out to get women. Maybe we’ll get a fair hearing.
Then January 23 rolls around, and over a million of us descend on Washington to peacefully march for life, and it’s a five second blurb on the news with the implication that we’re either religious nuts or violent extremists.
This hit home for me watching the media’s fawning coverage of the Jena 6 protests. I don’t know that much about the case one way or the other, but the stories always included callbacks to previous civil rights protests that have been vindicated by history, like the Birmingham us boycott.
Now, I’m quite sure there have been some intemperate and foolish things said and done in support of the Jena 6, but that wasn’t the story. The story was about thousands of people coming together to protest injustice.
But for anti-war protestors or pro-life groups, if one moron does something stupid, that becomes the story.
It’s not because these groups lack discipline; it’s because the game is rigged. It’s not going to change through increased discipline any more than a battered wife is going to end the abuse by doing a better job on housework.
