Thanks to Mom

Cindy Sheehan embarrasses me. It's a particular kind of look-down-at-your-shoes embarrassment, like when your mom showed up to your fourth-grade classroom to deliver the lunch you left on the kitchen counter. And she won't go away.

I've spent a lot of time and words trying to explain, understand, justify my generation's near-muted response to this war. I won't use the word apathy because it seems, well, overused, but young Americans' collective shrug in the face of all the events since that day in September has turned into what appears to be a shrug-a-thon. The fact that now, the most visible and vocal opponent of the war and the administration is a forty-something woman in a fisherman's hat highlights what we haven't been doing. So now our moms have to do it for us.