The column claims we are more Brady Bunch than Simpsons, obviously oblivious to the fact that I get most of my expressions from Ned Flanders, that Ben named his high school band (he was a drummer) after Milhouse (who in turn was named after Richard Milhouse Nixon, in whose cabinet my grandfather served as Secretary of HUD), that my son Thomas is as mischevious as Bart and my daughter Allie as smart as Lisa, or that my son Joe has an appetite for jelly doughnuts. (My emphasis)

What's barometrically significant, given Sadr's stance, is that he continues to call for a timetable [for the U.S.] to leave this country," rather than simply taking the less complicated out-now stance. "We must know that they are leaving, and we must know when," he tells Latif. So he would like, but we're not, despite the rationalizations of the Washington Post's edit page to portray the push for an indefinite U.S. presence in Iraq as a mission of responsible governance. It's unlikely that Sadr, in the middle of jockeying for power within Shiite Iraq, would take this position unless he sensed that the Shiites don't want the U.S. out just this instant -- that is to say, if they didn't quite understandably fear what will happen in the wake of a U.S. withdrawal. Since Sadr's back in the spotlight, the way his rhetoric changes (or doesn't) on this subject in the wake of the South Korea Declaration will be worth watching.

Also barometrically significant: Sadr distances himself from Iran (later in the interview) but embraces Hezbollah:

Mr Sadr, whose rise to become one of the most influential figures in Iraq
coincided with the US overthrow of Saddam, said his movement sought to follow
the example of Hizbollah, the Shia armed resistance movement in Lebanon.
"Hizbollah and the Mahdi Army are two sides of the same coin," he said. "We are
together in the same trench against the forces of evil."

It may be hard in the U.S. to understand how someone can revere Hezbollah and be lukewarm on Iran, but it's a coherent position. Hezbollah fights Israel and drives the Shiite community in Lebanon. Iran has a fraught history with Iraq -- to say the least -- and severely complicates Shiite Arabs' relations with their Sunni neighbors more broadly. It's likely that Sadr is underplaying his own connections to the Iran, but, again, reading Sadr as a cipher text for his constituents is what's important here.