A mama's pain. Our pain.

Cindy Sheehan's cause is easy to understand. The mother whose son was killed in Iraq is camped outside George W. Bush's Texas ranch in hopes that she can meet with the president. Of all people, Southerners can relate to this story, which boils down to a grieving mother seeking answers for her GI son's death.
Viewed in this light, it's not all that different from the vigil of the mother of Natalee Holloway, the Birmingham girl who has been missing in Aruba for the past few months. None but the most cruel would belittle a mother's love and dedication. And yet plenty on the right side of the pundit world are doing just that to Cindy Sheehan. See here and here.
What would these pundits have done in a different era? What would they have done to Mrs. Goodman? Mrs. Chaney? Mrs. Schwerner? Of course, it's a waste of time to speculate on how low the right-wing media will sink.
However, the president is a different matter. His administration, by its own proclamation, is staffed with the "grownups." You'd think he might take the time to do the grownup thing -- spend an hour with Mrs. Sheehan. Have her up to the ranchhouse for iced tea and a talk on the porch. It's the Southern way.
But, no.
On Friday, the president's motorcade whizzed past Mrs. Sheehan on the way to delivering Bush to a fundraiser.
It's a powerful symbol, one that extends beyond Mrs. Sheehan.
Just like that black SUV leaving Cindy Sheehan in the dust, this president's policies have done the same for working families in the South and elsewhere. His tax policies that favor the ultra-rich, his energy policies that seek more drilling, his foreign policies that thoughtlessly put troops in harm's way will leave the country with a nasty hangover.
We know that the South helped put George W. Bush in the White House. It remains to be seen how long before the average Southern voter realizes their needs for security, economic and otherwise, are being ignored. That, just like Mrs. Sheehan, we are being ignored along the side of the road.