Dangerous Dan Thoughts and musings on the world

If Cindy Sheehan hasn’t already jumped the shark, she certainly did with her little jaunt to Venezuela. She’s in Caracas this week for the World Social Forum, which is an anti-globalist and anti-American group. She’s there talking about how she doesn’t like Bush, how the troops should come home, the U.S. shouldn’t be meddling in other countries, etc.

It’s one thing to do this in the States. That at least has the tone of honest disagreement and using her voice in dissent of the government. Going elsewhere to do this, however, and speaking at a fairly explicit anti-American gathering makes her seem like she is herself anti-American instead of just a concerned American mother, the image she likes to project.

Most Americans seem to have a pretty high tolerance for domestic disagreement, but a curiously low tolerance for bad-mouthing the U.S. on foreign soil. Take the Dixie Chicks, for example. The uproar against them started because they insulted Bush at a concert in the U.K. Had they made the same comment in the U.S., I doubt the retaliation against them would have been as bad. Lefty folks invented the verb of being ‘dixie chicked’ to describe the phenomenon of popular revolt of red staters against entertainers for speaking their mind. There was also a perception that middle America and especially country folks won’t put up with liberal tendencies among country stars.

That’s incorrect. Many of the most famous country artists have been anti-establishment and somewhat liberal on many issues: Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson, among others. And let’s not forget Willie Nelson who famously smokes pot and who campaigned on behalf of Dennis Kucinich and John Kerry. Nobody threw away his CDs. Part of the problem with the Chicks is that they didn’t own up to their views. They made the comment on foreign soil and then made stupid, weak excuses about being misquoted or it being misinterpreted instead of just defending it and chalking it up to political disagreement. The fact that they ran from the comment instead of embracing it made them look like deceitful sunshine patriots who will praise U.S. actions at home, while disparaging them abroad. They came off as dishonest panderers.

Anyway, tangent aside, by speaking at the World Social Forum and buttering up to dictator Hugo Chavez, Sheehan now looks like a useful idiot of foreign anti-American elements. She’s the dancing bear people like Chavez trot out to perform for the slogan-chanting faithful.