Apparently young Master Frost's radio address two weeks ago, pleading for President Bush to sign the bi-partisan SCHIP bill passed by Congress was too touching and effective for the hard right. As so often is the case with these ideologues, their response to a statement of principle which does not please them was not reasoned debate, but slashing personal attacks on the bearer of what they regarded as bad news.
Mark Steyn in "The Corner" of The National review on 7 October 2007,
(http://corner.nation...=), wrote "The Democrats sign up a sick kid to read their Saturday morning radio address... and the rest of us heartless bastards on the right were no doubt too busy laughing to pay attention" but, fortunately for the lazy R-wing-pundits the hard right blogosphere dug into "the facts" about Frost and his family, and decided that the Frosts were far from "poor." ABC of the mass media picked up on the story and gave it wider currency.
According to information culled by "icwhatudo" at Free Republic, Daddy Frost was revealed not to be a simple poor artisan, a "woodworker," but owner of a design company operating out of some commercial space which Mr. Frost senior owns, the Frosts live in a 3,000 square foot home in a tony neighborhood, and the two Frost children, having recovered from the horrific car accident which caused their use of the SCHIP program, now attend a very expensive private school where the tuition is $20,000 a year, and so on... ha, ha! A "new definition of working families" Democrat-style, ha, ha! See, this proves the Republican contention, that the SCHIP program is being expanded to help well-off folks who have NO need for tax-payer funded health care, they simply chose not to buy health insurance and are now parasites on sneakily growing socialized medicine.
Investigative reporters (or, if you prefer, snooping gossipers) from the right-wing publications and talk show hosts, learning the above facts, began harassing the Frost family with phone calls. The right-wing noise machine relentlessly assaulted the Frost family, spreading the de-bunking story far and wide in the inimitable malicious fashion customary with Malkin, Wizbang, Free Republic, Weekly Standard, and so on. And why not, the above details about the Frosts pretty much undercut the whole Democratic scenario, don't they? Or, wait: is this the true story, or just carefully tailored distortions pared to fit and crammed into the Republican-designed shoe of falsehood, as Cinderella's step-sister cut her toes to make her foot fit the glass slipper?
Here are the facts: 12-year old Graeme has a scholarship to Baltimore's Park School, so that, although the school costs $15,000 a year, the Frosts pay only $500; his sister attends a special school which helps her with her brain injuries, and the state pays the $23,000 annual cost. The "lavish" home in the tony neighborhood was purchased 16 years ago for $55,000 when the neighborhood was anything but tony. The Frosts made $45,000 combined last year, and the State of Maryland found them eligible to participate in the CHIP Program (based on guidelines put in place by President Bush, you see). Mr. Frost, like many small, self-employed businessmen, cannot afford to provide health insurance for himself and his own family.
(http://blogs.abcnews...)
The right-wing attacks on the Frosts and their son continue. Behold, compassionate conservatism!
What struck me in all this hullabaloo is the vicious and relentless attack on the children, not just the parents; the harassment of the parents, the strained attempts to picture them somehow as freeloaders when what they are is a couple trying to live the American dream: to create their own small business, be entrepreneurs through self-help... supposedly fitting the Republican fantasy of standing on your own feet and making something of yourself. Then, when slammed by a terrible accident which severely damaged two of their offspring, being helped by their community through SCHIP, and telling the world about it, only to be attacked cruelly by the Republican smear machine for not taking jobs with a mega corporation which supposedly (according to the Republican pundits) would provide them with health care through their jobs, instead of having used their resources to establish their own small business.
Under other circumstances, the Frosts would have been used by the Republicans as poster people for rugged American independence. But they made the mistake of making a political statement which did not suit the Bush bootlickers, and now they are suffering for their temerity. The attacks on the Frosts have been facilitated by the staffs of various Republican members of Congress, and Harry Reid has complained about it; the Republican minority leader has had no response.
I know this is an over-used example by me, but two years ago Delegate Mark Sickles was the recipient of a "Robo-call" to his district voters the night before the election that stated he had died and to go ahead and vote for the "other" guy on the ballot. Mark has neither the time nor the money as well as the addition resources to deal with the political sensitivities involved to pursue this for the small return it may normally gain. This is where the power of the Internet, the Blogosphere, and quite frankly the courts needs to come to serious task. We need to stop this and punish what may have been considered a "Joke" but is actually a felony in terms of "Voter Suppression", "Fraud", and direct interference in the democratic process which our kids are dieing to protect for the rest of us.....
The Dems should be appealing to the eligible (poor) Republican electorate who don't have health insurance. But maybe they are too busy being "educated" by Rush each day.
Thanks for a good story Teddy.
These are exactly the bloc of voters that Jim Webb says should return to the Democratic Party, and whom he has said he intends to bring back into the fold. It will be a hard sell to these too-often gullible, deliberately misinformed, frequently disappointed, and now sometimes paranoid worriers striving to make ends meet, frightened by the rapid changes of modern life, and too busy struggling to survive to have time to pay attention (and think for themselves). Or so it seems to me.
This mentality informs many extremists, both left and right, who are quick to categorize "those people" (of whatever kind) and condemn them en masse without a trial, not for anything they actually have done as individuals, but for what the condemner FEARS they might do by virtue of their associations.