The Reverse Of What They Wanted

By now, half the politically coherent people in the country have heard the name of Cindy Sheehan. Yet most of them have already forgotten, due to the limited life-span of the news cycle, why her name has permeated the political dog-days of summer so completely as this quote from John Cole indicates:

As I write this, there are 2,560 current media stories about Cindy Sheehan listed by google news. Technorati coughs up another 4967 blog posts. Google, when asked, coughs and sputters and reveals 729,000 archived stories. By comparison, Todd Beamer, of “Let’s Roll” fame offers up 69,000 hits.

Tell me this one, folks... Would this story, and Cindy herself, drifted downward into relative obscurity if it wasn't for the constant attention paid to it? Particularly by Michelle Malkin, Bill O'Reilly, and the rest of the GOP's organized media team?

Think about it. If they hadn't been beating the Sheehan drum for all this time, would there be any international attention at all? Hell, thanks to the firestorm of coverage, even Viggo Mortensen paid her a well-publicized visit. (And anyone that has Aragorn on their side simply must win, right?) So without this added snarky coverage, how long would this really have lasted?

Maybe 5 days tops. Then, the media will have gotten bored, the cycle would have ended, and she would sit there in the hot Texas sun while wilting into obscurity.

It's so hard to find things to thank FOX News for these days.