Ethos as a Means of Persuasion

Cindy Sheehan creates her ethos by using the tragic death of her son to gain sympathy which she manipulates into credibility. She protests the Iraq war, because she believes that it directly killed her son, who should have lived. After doing some more research on Cindy via the most credible source on the internet aka Wikipedia, I have some to the conclusion that she has too much time on her hands. She must be a credible expert grounded in the endeavors of US foreign policy and militaristic action, or else I don't know why anyone would listen to her, or give her all of her publicity. Yes- the death of her son is tragic, no- that does not give her the right to be plastered all over the public media sector as if she is on some crusade to stop the war. I do not find the ethos that Sheehan creates to be appealing. The most appealing ethos to me is credibility gained through service efforts and giving, combined with intelligence-whether gained from studying at a university or individually self-taught. This has led me to support most of the causes brought forth by Zach de la Rocha, with the backing of Noam Chomsky. Not to say that I support all their interests, but I do support some.