Matriots vs. Mama Grizzlies!

Using similar rhetorical strategies, grieving-mother-turned-anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan and former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, both call to arms the moms of the America, coining new terms for their maternal armies--Matriots for Sheehan and Mama Grizzlies for Palin.

In 2006 article entitled "Matriotism" for the Huffington Post, Sheehan declares, "Matriotism is the opposite of patriotism...not to destroy it, but to be a yin to its yang, and balance out the militarism of patriotism" and explores, "a new paradigm for true and lasting peace in the world."  In protest of the war that cost her son his life, Sheehan has been vocal about her opposition to the war, but her neoligistic Matriot is a curious pormanteau word that combines the qualities of maternity and patriotism--love and care for one's children and love and care for one's country.

Interestingly, Sheehan does not restrict Matriotism specifically to mothers or even women.  She writes, "Not everyone is a mother, but there is one universal truth that no one can dispute no matter how hard they try (and believe me, some will try): Everyone has a mother!  Mothers give life, and if the child is lucky, mothers nurture life.  And if a man has had a nurturing mother he will already have a base of Matriotism."  The effect of this conclusion--reasoning notwithstanding--is the transcendence of sex in the elevation of Matriotism from strictly mothers to a larger social and political identity.  That is, Matriotism is not unique to mothers, but rather, it constitutes a sentiment that runs through the general populace, or at least those with nurturing mothers.  This reminds us of the Redemptive Mother of Garner and Slattery's study on the mass media depiction of mothers during wartime.  Thus, it is the civic duty of the mother to instill in her children a healthy dose of Matriotism.

Sheehan's Matriotist rhetoric is strikingly similar to Palin's rhetoric regarding her Mama Grizzlies in their reference to the role of mothers and their responsibility to stand up for their children.  Sheehan writes, "There is one most important thing that matriots would never do, however, and this is the key to stopping killing to solve problems: a matriot would never send her child or another mother's child to fight nonsense wars...and she would march into a war that she considered just to protect her child from harm."  This seems a lot like Palin's invocation of the image of mother grizzly bears in Alaska.  She says in her ad for SarahPAC, "Here in Alaska, I always think of the mama grizzly bears that rise up on their hind legs when somebody's comin' to attack their cubs, to do something adverse toward their cubs.  Ya thought pit bulls were tough!  Well, ya don't wanna mess with the mama grizzlies."  Both Sheehan and Palin iconically reference the potentially militant and aggressive nature of Matriots and Mama Grizzlies to galvanize mothers across the country in support of their political agendas--anti-war efforts on Sheehan's end and support for the Tea Party on Palin's.  For both, the Matriots and the Mama Grizzlies constitute a new paradigm in thinking: common sense conservatism for Palin and peaceful patriotism for Sheehan.

In effect, we have invocations of similar images as well as similar rhetorical strategies in the new developments of the role of mothers in American.

Here Palin's ad!