The wingnuts bring in the heavy artillery to smear Cindy Sheehan

Pat Boone.

Yes, Pat Boone.

Who's next, Anita Bryant?

I wish it was a joke, but it isn't.

Joe Gandelman:

I do know that in later years Pat Boone did record this album of rock, which is reportedly played to terrorist prisoners until they confess. Amnesty International is protesting its use.

His quote that will DEFINITELY change your mind is this:

This lady (Sheehan) and the groups that have been demonstrating in front of the president's ranch in Crawford and following him around are the very same people that were the dropout, turn-on, anti-war peace activists back [in the Vietnam War era]," Boone said. "They still have this crazy notion that by just being peaceful and maybe toking up or something like that – it's like an ostrich with its head in the sand – maybe the danger and the bad guys will go away and leave you alone, which is not gonna happen."

See? All of the demonstrators are people in their 50s and 60s.

The large number of ones that look young just have better make up or face lifts.

And perhaps Pat is right: war critics have started likening this war to Vietnam so why not refight the Vietnam War domestically altogether? Paint them all as hippies. Baby boomers are a bit hippy, but mostly around the waist these days.

Why not frame this as the Vietnam protesters — putting aside their AARP cards, prune juice cocktails and forgoing the new Rolling Stones' Wheelchair Concert Tour — to jump into the fray for one more anti-war, America-hating battle? Why not charge that it's the hippies of the 60s with their sex, drugs and rock and roll who don't back this war.

He also makes an argument that 911s will happen again unless we fight the terrorists on their turf.

Only, news reports quoting experts and Pentagon officials recently suggested that Iraq is now their turf because we're there. Pat forgot to mention that report, though.

I swear, we baby boomers can't win. We have the wingnuts thinking we're all stuck in 1969, and the younger generations saying that we sold out and it's US buying the McMansions and the SUVs, instead of looking at their thirtysomething neighbors.

But when the wingnuts have to resort to Pat Boone because everyone else on their side has already made them look foolish, perhaps the tide really IS turning.