They Only Know One Way to Tell a War Story
By Chris Weinkopf

There are few spectacles that delight the establishment media more than a good old-fashioned protest march—and none more than a war protest. It’s a feast for their senses in particular: the metronomic slogan chants, the sparkle of the tie-dye, the familiar smell of controlled substances wafting through the air. All this brings baby-boomer reporters and editors back to a better time, before blogs, talk radio, and FOX News, when the establishment media still wielded monopoly power, and could topple both a war effort and a sitting President.

 

So when a horde of ’60s retreads, anarchists, and committed Bush-haters gathered in Washington this fall to protest the war in Iraq—in the final seconds of Cindy Sheehan’s 15 minutes of fame—it was all groovy as far as the media were concerned.

 

To hear the press tell it, this was no lefty reunion. It was the voice of the people. The crowd was “diverse,” full of solid citizens awakened from political apathy by the wicked Bush administration, part of a burgeoning movement against war, meanness, and men who kick dogs.

 

“The protest drew a broad cross section of young and old, veteran activists and first-timers,” gushed the Washington Post. The Boston Globe chimed in, suspiciously verbatim: “The young and the old, longtime peace activists and first-time protesters gathered on the national mall.” The day included “uncountable families motivated for the first time to protest,” according to the Associated Press.

 

No doubt there were some moderates and neophytes in attendance, and maybe even some Mormon grandmothers. But the more candid accounts in the openly left-wing media told a far different story. “The overwhelming majority of attendees were committed activists whose politics ranged from progressive to leftist—the sort of people who always go to war protests, or at least stay home and feel guilty about it,” wrote Jeff Horwitz in Salon. The alternative L.A. Weekly observed that the kaffiyeh—the Arab headdress which has become a sign of solidarity for opponents of Israel the world over—“was the de rigueur accessory worn by countless speakers.”

 

Not exactly a Norman Rockwell crowd.

 

The truth is, folks with families, jobs, and civic responsibilities rarely go marching. There’s only one bona-fide right-wing protest of any consequence, and that’s the annual March for Life. And the big media automatically brand its attendees as religious zealots. “Marching with evangelical purpose,” began the Los Angeles Times piece about the 2005 pro-life rally. The accompanying photo ran under the caption, “on a mission.”

 

Yet there was scant mention of zealotry or missions in any of the reporting on the Iraq war squawk. Among hundreds of news stories, only a handful mentioned that the co-sponsor of the event, International ANSWER, is a Workers’ World Party front that supports Cuba’s Fidel Castro, North Korea’s Kim Jong Il, the terrorist “resistance” in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the abolition of private property. Or that ANSWER’s leader, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, is doing pro bono legal work for Saddam Hussein.

 

There is nothing inherently “anti-war” or “pro-peace” about this group. It supports plenty of wars, just not the ones that promote freedom or defend American interests. Obviously not everyone on the D.C. mall that day bought into the full Clark/ANSWER agenda. But that’s not the point. If David Duke were leading the March for Life, you can bet we’d hear about it on “World News Tonight.”

 

Unfortunately for the establishment media, the inconvenient reality of who provided the real steam behind this protest conflicted with their favored story. Rather than a rally that was big and populist, this event’s turnout of 100,000 people merely mirrored in size and composition the demonstrations that were staged by radicals prior to the invasion of Iraq three years ago. The American public has not gotten onto Cindy Sheehan’s bus, and does not support march organizers’ call for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, thereby turning the country over to terrorist rule.

 

Note to the establishment media that seems determined to re-play those old mental tapes from the Age of Aquarius over and over: Just because a chanting horde has gathered in Washington doesn’t mean it’s the 1960s. And just because there’s a war going on doesn’t mean it’s Vietnam.

 

 

Chris Weinkopf, a contributing writer for The American Enterprise, is editorial page editor of the Los Angeles Daily News.