Demagogue

I thought I'd take a gander at Dutch coverage of the Cindy Sheehan circus to see if my impression--that it's been covered, but not much--was right. Having gone to a few newspaper sites and run some searches on google.nl, I think I was right. There have been a few short items in most papers, but that's about it. And they've been pretty neutral in their coverage.

For instance, take this story from yesterday's Telegraaf--the only one about her in that paper, according to the search engine on the paper's website. It's just four paragraphs, and it's mostly about how the residents of Crawford are getting annoyed by the large number of protestors who have shown up. It mentions their going to court to limit parking in the area, and also the destruction of wooden crosses by the driver of some kind of truck. There is one paragraph that describes what she's doing and how Bush is reacting:

The activists are supporting Cindy Sheehan, who is attracting a lot of attention with her campaign. Her son was killed in Iraq. She demands a meeting with Bush and the withdrawal of the 138,000 American troops from Iraq. Bush respects her opinion but has refused to meet her.

The Dutch blogs have been less neutral. It's hard to say, because the language filters on Google aren't perfect, but there seem to be at least 30 or so Dutch blogs that have commented on Sheehan. As far as I can tell, they have all, or virtually all, commended her. Not a big surprise, given the public opinion here against the war, but it shouldn't make one overlook the not insignificant minority that favored the war, nor the fact that the Dutch were among the Coalition of the Willing and had troops in Iraq for the first year and a half of the occupation.

I liked this blog's pithy comment, though. Maybe we should start a pool:

The question is who will be arrested first: Cindy Sheehan or bin Laden?