Topic: WorldNetDaily
To: Washington Examiner
Re: "Good mourning, America" by Kathleen Antrim, Oct. 6
Kathleen Antrim's article read more like a press release than any sort of "review" of the book "American Mourning." That may because serving as a press agent for a friend was the whole point: The article did not disclose that, according to Antrim's own website, Antrim appears every other Monday on the San Francisco radio show of the book's co-author, Melanie Morgan. Antrim's closeness to Morgan makes her enthusiasm for Morgan's book a tad suspect.
Because Antrim was in press-agent mode, she also failed to disclose Morgan's biases against Cindy Sheehan, a subject of the book. As chairwoman of the group Move America Forward, Morgan led a "You Don't Speak for Me, Cindy" tour in 2005. Morgan has, in her columns for right-wing website WorldNetDaily, called Sheehan "shameless" and someone who "hold[s] a twisted hatred of this country."
Additionally, Morgan's book is published by the book division of WorldNetDaily, which has its own special hatred of Sheehan; in November 2005, it published a article and photo that falsely portrayed a book-signing by Sheehan as a failure when, in fact, Sheehan sold and signed 100 copies of her book at the event.
Sheehan is certainly not above criticism. But rather than being a book that, in Antrim's words, "touches the very essence of American culture," the background of Morgan and her publisher indicates that "American Mourning" has all the earmarks of a hatchet job on Sheehan.
(More here.)
