After a target of one of Michelle Malkin’s hate campaigns committed suicide you’d think Little Lulu would show a little restraint.
But no; Malkin and others on the Right have formed a full-scale howling mob to attack the family of 12-year-old Graeme Frost. Righties have been calling the Frosts, harassing them with personal questions. Malkin personally drove by the Frosts’ home so that she could describe it to her readers, and she went to a commercial property they own and interviewed one of the tenants.
Why? Because Graeme appeared in a commercial in support of the S-CHIP program.
Faiz writes at Think Progress:
The right-wing immediately condemned Democrats for daring to put a human face on the SCHIP program at a time when Bush was proposing a “diminishment of the number of children covered.†Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) — who has posed with children to advance his own political agenda — claimed Graeme was being used “as a human shield.â€
Conservatives have more recently turned their targets on young Graeme Frost himself. A poster at the Free Republic propagated information alleging that Frost was actually a rich kid being pampered by the government. Among other bits of information, the post by the Freeper “icwhatudo†asserts that Graeme and his sister Gemma attend wealthy schools that cost “nearly $40,000 per year for tuition†and live in a well-off home.
The smear attack against Graeme has taken firm hold in the right-wing blogosphere. The National Review, Michelle Malkin, Wizbang, Powerline, and the Weekly Standard blog have all launched assaults on the Frost family. The story is slowly working its way into traditional media outlets as well.
Here are the facts that the right-wing distorted in order to attack young Graeme:
1) Graeme has a scholarship to a private school. The school costs $15K a year, but the family only pays $500 a year.
2) His sister Gemma attends another private school to help her with the brain injuries that occurred due to her accident. The school costs $23,000 a year, but the state pays the entire cost.
3) They bought their “lavish house†sixteen years ago for $55,000 at a time when the neighborhood was less than safe.
4) Last year, the Frost’s made $45,000 combined. Over the past few years they have made no more than $50,000 combined.
5) The state of Maryland has found them eligible to participate in the CHIP program.
Desperate to defend Bush’s decision to cut off millions of children from health care, the right wing has stooped to launching baseless and uninformed attacks against a 12 year old child and his family.
Right wing bloggers have been harassing the Frosts, calling their home numerous times to get information about their private lives. Compassionate conservatism indeed.
To the list of shameless liars attacking the Frost family I would like to add spree at Wake Up America, Jimmie at The Sundries Shack, and Don Surber. I only wish there was some way these tools could get a taste of their own medicine.
John Cole, on Malkin’s stalking campaign:
Maybe she can get some of her flunkies at Hot Air to sit with binoculars and see what they have for dinner. Better not be government cheese, or the SHIT is going to hit the fan.
The Malkin wing of the current Republican party makes me fucking sick. …
…This is about the base instincts of the modern right, and the attempts to intimidate and smear and label it as “investigating.†I don’t have a problem with opposing SCHIP, I don’t have a problem with opposing legislation by anecdote (which is why I, unlike Michelle, hated the Schiavo legislation). I do have a problem with publishing a desperate family’s financial information, scouring pictures of their kitchen to determine the value of their appliances, and stalking their abode. Even if they were used at a press conference by Democrats.
What Michelle has done here is creepy and weird and wrong.
Her defense for her behavior, and for that of Greater Wingnuttia:
Asking questions and subjecting political anecdotes to scrutiny are what journalists should be doing.
But all this shit started with obviously stupid and dishonest “questions” that weren’t questions at all, but vile innuendo. The reason actual journalists didn’t ask these “questions” is that there was never any reason to ask them except to engage in this innuendo. “Mr. & Ms. Frost, you appear to be spending $40,000 a year on your $45,000 income in order to send your kids to a swanky private school. Could you explain to our readers how you are perpetrating tax fraud and lying to the government to qualify for financial benefits?” A reporter who asked a “question” like that ought to expect a punch in the snout, frankly.
Nothing in this family’s story is remotely implausible, and anyone who pretends otherwise is making up crap because they don’t like a healthcare program that benefits the middle class. Period.
Malkin and the mouth breathers who follow her think they can force their way on America by mob rule and intimidation. Let’s prove ’em wrong. Support S-CHIP.
Update: Digby offers mild objections.
This is so loathesome I am literally sick to my stomach. These kids were hurt in a car accident. Their parents could not afford health insurance — and sure as hell couldn’t get it now with a severely handicapped daughter. And these shrieking wingnut jackasses are harassing their family for publicly supporting the program that allowed the kids to get health care. A program, by the way, which a large number of these Republicans support as well.
They went after Michael J. Fox. They went after a wounded Iraq war veteran. Now they are going after handicapped kids. There is obviously no limit to how low these people will go.
They’d better pray that they stay rich and healthy and live forever because if there is a hell these people are going to be on the express train to the 9th circle the minute they shuffle off their useless mortal coils.
Scum.
To paraphrase Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin and all those right wing nuts are PHONY Americans.
They do not support the principles of the U.S. Constitution nor do they support the principles under which the U.S. was founded.
Malkin et al. are bullies engaging in intimidation. I hope the Frosts find some sharp lawyer who’s also sick of this behavior and is willing to go to bat for them. As Malkin’s earlier target who committed suicide proved, these people will stop at nothing. No one should have to put with the crap thrown by these rattled attack monkeys. They think it’s fun.
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Clearly, the parents of Malkin and Steyn and all the others were child molesters and torturers and they deserve to be sent to prison for life. At least, that’s what Steyn’s ‘fair game’ rules indicate. Attack innocent families if their kids voice an opinion.
I don’t think we should let this story rest till the MSM starts asking them where they learned to be so cruel, harassing and inhumane?
Part of the far right’s strategy is to disorient sane people by their extreme sociopathy. But they’ve overplayed their hand; the element of surprise is long gone; we now _expect_ them to act like savages. Shock and awe has turned into disgust and contempt.
They target the weak, thinking that proves them strong; but the world sees through that delusion. There will be consequences.
BTW, contra John Cole, I do have a problem with legislation by anecdote. It is a prescription for gullibility.
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No real American would act this way.
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Where is karma when you need it? These people are truly lost to shame.
Bush and Cheney and Rove elevated this unAmerican low-life extremism by initiating law-breaking and clean systems busting, abetted by a republican party willing to stand with them in the resulting sewage flow, and a democratic party unwilling to do much except hold their noses. Malkin, et al, are the vermin drawn to the stinking mess started by BushCo.
So, while we watch these vermin scurrying to chew on the wounds of little kids, remember who broke the system, and remember who adjusted themselves to the stink in order to share power and rhetoric with Bush.
Calling these people ‘pond scum’ is an insult to algae. And it doesn’t capture the brownshirt overtones.
What is wrong with those people? Is there something in their water that makes them crazy? Not enough fluoride, perhaps? Toxic exposure to Ayn Rand while their bones were still growing?
There is something deeply disturbed inside those people. It amazes me that they can get so hepped up about anyone, much less someone who appeared in the Democratic response to the President’s weekly radio address.
Who in the real world cares about the friggin’ Saturday radio address, much less the Democratic response? Is there some unknown-to-me modern custom of Americans gathering around their radios to hear these modern Fireside Chats? I’m the most politically plugged-in person in my circle, and I’m lucky if I hear a line or two mention of the address on some news update later.
Where I live, outside of Malkin-land, the whole creepy stalking of the Frost family serves to introduce the story of Graeme Frost to a bunch of people who’d never really heard it, and to reinforce the impression that the people who wanted to cut his health care are just, well, really creepy.
Ugh. Maybe Michelle can explain to me how it is anything but repugnant to deny children health care. Heaven forbid we should debate actual issues.
Something doesn’t add up here. If their mortgage is approximately $1200 a month, then their home insurance and property taxes must be outrageous. Either that or they have borrowed heavily on the house.
For a 30-year $55000 mortgage at 8%, the principal and interest would be about $400 a month (Note: There are several mortgage calculators available on-line where you can calculate this yourself.) I question why their mortgage is still so high after 16 years.
It would seem that there is a great deal more to the story than the media is reporting.
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Either that or they have borrowed heavily on the house.
People commonly do that when faced with big bills, such as for medical care for their children after an accident.
It would seem that there is a great deal more to the story than the media is reporting.
It’s obvious the Frosts have been hanging on by their fingernails for some time, like a great many other “middle class” families in the U.S. today.
Update: I forgot to note that the Frosts own two properties, their home and a commercial building. Is the mortgage payment is for both?
It would seem that there is a great deal more to the story than the media is reporting.
The story is the veto of healthcare for 4 million children currently without it. Bush’s 4th veto in seven years, after large majorities in both houses of Congress approved it.
The 12 year old boy and his family are incidental to ‘the story’. The rightists would like you to forget the real story and make it about a family’s efforts to get by on limited income and why mommy and daddy deserve contempt for trying to help uninsured children coverage.
They might be perfectly wonderful parents, neighbors and citizens. But they want you to see them as something grotesque, twisted, dishonest, just so you’ll forgrt what the president did because he’s Mother Theresa, to them.
What do you expect from a party that smears heros like Kerry and Mccleland? That wants government to drown in a bathtub? That makes wealthy mercenaries and neglects real soldiers? That says bombs=peace, clear skies=dirty air, sound energy policy = blow up mountain homes and valleys?
I call it 1984 come true.
Why doesn’t ‘somebody’ suggest that there is a story in the CHIP story; the abuse this family has suffered (in addition to the medical problems) after they agreed to lend their support to advertising for the medical program they need. CNN might do it. This puts a very personal face on the story and an ugly face (just in time for halloween) on the opponents of the program.