Puffing moms and grannies for 'peace'

Brent Bozell wrote in Townhall One of the most profoundly annoying conceits of liberalism is the idea that dissent is the solitary province of the Left, and when liberals do it, they should be glorified for doing it, no matter how outrageous the protest.

The Left has never been known for treating Left and Right equally.

President Bush is spending some vacation time in Crawford, Texas, so the media, predictably, are once again glorifying his left-wing protesters with lavish coverage of their antics, while dutifully refusing to identify them in any way as left wing. Call it covering and covering up. Time and Newsweek both ran pictures of a tiny group holding MoveOn.org signs protesting the John Roberts nomination outside the White House. Neither magazine identified the group as liberals, nor even mentioned MoveOn; you had to squint at the photos to make out the group's name on the protest signs.

That is normal. They identify right wingers and if they are feeling nice they will just label them conservative, they often use more offensive titles, but they consider liberalism and the left to be normal, and therefore not needing a label.

Now, angry, Bush-hating Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq and co-founder of "Gold Star Families for Peace" -- last glorified by ABC in January for protesting President Bush's "lavish" second inauguration -- is being celebrated again as she sits outside Bush's Texas ranch. On their Saturday evening newscasts on Aug. 6, ABC and CBS touted the Sheehan protest with just "a few dozen people," allowing her to say Bush is enjoying his vacation while "I'm never going to be able to enjoy another vacation because he killed my son." Bush killed him, she says. Not Saddam-loving terrorists. Bush.... Can you imagine the networks ruining the Clinton vacation on Martha's Vineyard by making a big story out of a conservative protester there? I can't, because they didn't. In 1998, a few weeks after Clinton admitted sex with Monica Lewinsky, he went to his first partisan pep rally in Worcester, Mass. ABC and CBS did full stories, and the streets outside the hall were filled with protesters demanding Clinton resign, but ABC and CBS failed to interview them. Only Fox News brought up how a local Democratic city council member, Konstantina Lukes, refused to attend. Cut back to the present. Cindy Sheehan wasn't the only "peace" protester glorified by "Today." Late in the Monday program, they aired another seven minutes of pure propaganda on the "Raging Grannies" of Tucson, Ariz., who muster a whopping 15 to 20 protesters outside a military recruitment center every Wednesday. What is it with these left-wing grannies, anyway?

The've got nothing else to do, and want to extend their 15 minutes of fame.

It was almost exactly like five years ago, when the publicity frenzy was for Doris "Granny D" Haddock, agitating for the liberal cause of "campaign finance reform." ABC's Charles Gibson congratulated her for her "very worthy work." NBC's Matt Lauer ("I love Granny D!") and Katie Couric ("She's great!") took turns cheerleading. For the Tucson grannies, anchor Natalie Morales could only find cuteness and "commitment," not mudslinging and hard-core ideology: "Beware, there is a group of grannies serving up much more than milk and cookies.

What they are serving up comes out of the south end of a north bound horse, but you can't identify that on TV, can you?

NBC's Peter Alexander caught up with them, proving commitment has no age limit."