Roy Moore and Cindy Sheehan

I was reading an article in The Atlantic about Roy Moore.

Moore, as you may remember, was the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. He tried to erect a large replica of the Ten Commandments before the federal judiciary ordered him to take it down. For a while, he defied the court order and invented the perfect propaganda maelstrom. The Theocracy Brigade couldn't have asked for better PR: the feds (that it was 'unelected activist judges' made it more delicious) were attacking God himself. Why Almighty God needed protection from mere mortals was never quite addressed.

Moore and his supporters passed this court order off as one of the worst atrocities of the last 100 years, ranking only behind de-segregation and the increasing rejection by most women of Biblically-mandated submission to their husbands. Moore quickly became the Theocracy Brigade's new Messiah, martyred not on a wooden cross but on a slab of granite.

Even since his martyrdom, Moore has toured the country tirelessly, speaking about the Ten Commandments at churches and dinners, conferences and conventions, hitting thirty-one states last year alone to share the news that the federal government is threatening the American way of life.

Being a martyr has never been quite so lucrative... at least not since Oliver North's heyday.

When Cindy Sheehan protested near President Bush's vacation ranch, she was smeared as a 'media whore' by Bush supporters. Yet you hear nary a word from those quarters protesting Moore's PR juggernaut. Back when he stood in front of the Alabama Supreme Court in George Wallace-esque fashion, Roy Moore made as much of a spectacle of himself (out of a much more trivial issue, if you ask me) as Sheehan did and to the same effect.

The fact of the matter is that both Roy Moore and Cindy Sheehan are intelligent, savvy individuals who know how to use the media to get their message across. I don't have a problem with either trying to convince people that they're right. Sheehan has much right to agitate for her cause as Moore does for his. Why the latter is treated like saint and the former like a whore is beyond me.