It had to be a slow newsday, with a reporter who hasn’t been paying much attention, to generate a thumbsucker like this: “Politics is clouding message of antiwar activist Sheehan.”

When Cindy Sheehan burst on the national scene, it was as an aggrieved mother whose son had died in Iraq. Plainspoken and unscripted, Sheehan delivered an easily relatable story that gave her a kind of moral authority.

OK, so what is the “easily relatable story that gave her a kind of moral authority”? Our intrepid reporter can’t be bothered to say. Just how does one derive “moral authority” from a dead son, anyway? Can someone explain this to me?

She deserved, and to the degree that she actually mourns her son (questionable, at this point–if there’s anyone of whom it could be said, in Ann Coulter’s much-criticized words, that they are “enjoying” a death, it is Mother Sheehan–she was obviously having the time of her life when she got arrested at the White House), continues to deserve our pity, but that doesn’t give her “moral authority,” absolute (to use Maureen Dowd’s silly adjective) or otherwise.

Since then, some have questioned whether Sheehan has strayed too far politically.

Gee, do ya think? What cave has this reporter been in?

And in not describing the “easily relatable story” (I guess we’re just supposed to infer it–“My son died in Iraq, you have to listen to my opinions about the war, and the war-mongering, lying terroristic Bush administration”), he can avoid telling the other side of the story. That is, she had already met with Bush once and was demanding a revisit with her Crawford histrionics, she couldn’t be bothered to put a stone on her son’s grave, her husband and son disowned her over her loony antics, etc. None of that can be found in this story. No, it’s just a noble woman who suffered a grievous loss, and who (in consorting with dictators and making common cause with the monsters who are actually responsible for killing her son) may have gone “a little too far.”

Sickening.