At this point, the jig is just about up. The right-wing mob grabbed their torches and pitchforks, went after a struggling, down-on-their-luck family of six, only to find that the real villains were the ones leading the mindless gang in misguided rage.
Time’s Karen Tumulty did a piece on the conservative smear of 12-year-old Graeme Frost and his family, highlighting nearly all of the right’s errors of fact and judgment. The Frosts, understandably, are turning down media requests, but the father sent Tumulty a helpful perspective.
He … passed along a letter from a friend, Andrew Gray, who wrote: “Chances are, Bonnie, Halsey and their kids will survive this. The sad reality is that they’ve already been through much worse. But what does it say about us as a nation that we seek to destroy the reputations of those we should honor? Have we become so cynical and nasty that we no longer can recognize simple courage and decency?”
Politics has never been a gentle game. As far back as 1895, satirist Finley Peter Dunne’s fictional saloonkeeper Martin Dooley observed that women, children and prohibitionists would do well to stay out of it, because “politics ain’t beanbag.” But surely, even Mr. Dooley could never have imagined a day would come when a mere seventh grader could be swift-boated.
Hard to imagine, and yet, here we are.
As for one of the leading members of the right-wing mob, Michelle Malkin whined the other day that too few of us on the left fail to recognize a “good-faith argument.” (No, she apparently did not appreciate the irony.) Ezra Klein responded with a bit of a challenge to Malkin: “Let’s have a good faith argument. I will debate Michelle Malkin anytime, anywhere, in any forum (save HotAir TV, which she controls), on the particulars of S-CHIP. We can set the debate at a think tank, on BloggingHeads, over IM. Hell, we can set up the podiums in the shrubbery outside my house, since that seems to be the sort of venue she naturally seeks out. And then if Malkin wants an argument, she can have one. We’ll talk S-CHIP and nothing but — nothing of the Frosts, or Congress, or her blog.”
So, are we going to get a good-faith policy argument? Alas, no.
Malkin responded yesterday:
“Debate” Ezra Klein? What a perverse distraction and a laughable waste of time that would be. And that’s what they really want, isn’t it? To distract and waste time so they can foist their agenda on the country unimpeded.
Yes, of course. A discussion about S-CHIP — allegedly what the debate is all about — in a forum of Malkin’s choosing would obviously be a “waste of time.” The goal is to destroy, smear, and intimidate. Why get “distracted” by trivia such as meaningful policy debates? What good could possibly come of that? How would that advance the goal of smearing a 12-year-old and his family, deterring others from standing up in the future?
Speaking of Malkin, a 2004 post of hers is making the rounds.
After my husband quit his job earlier this year (to become a full-time stay-at-home dad), we had a choice. We could either buy health insurance from his former employer through a program called COBRA at a cost of more than $1,000 per month(!) or we could go it alone in Maryland’s individual market. Given our financial circumstances, that “choice” wasn’t much of a choice at all. We had to go on our own.
We discovered that the most generous plans in Maryland’s individual market cost $700 per month yet provide no more than $1,500 per year of prescription drug coverage–a drop in the bucket if someone in our family were to be diagnosed with a serious illness.
With health insurance choices like that, no wonder so many people opt to go uninsured.
That was three years ago — and the plans are far more expensive now. Digby responds:
Malkin and her husband are lucky enough to qualify for wingnut welfare and have healthy children. Bully for them. They got theirs and are now railing against the “choices” made by two working parents who make 45,000 a year. But I think she and her stalker squad are going to be surprised to find that most people don’t see things their way — this smug judgmentalism and rank callousness is not the American way. That’s not what freedom is all about.
And I think they may be even more surprised to find that a lot of American businesses are going to get on board health care reform in a big way. They are beginning to see the writing on the wall if we don’t get a grip on this crisis. Tax cuts will not rein in costs. They will not mitigate the kind of risk required to compete in the global marketplace. They will not ensure a healthy workforce. And without that, we’ve got serious, serious problems. At least some people who want to keep making money in America must see that even if the blind ideologues of the right don’t.
One other thought. I’m still curious about what role, if any, Republicans on the Hill had in pushing this smear.
Republican congressional offices say they had nothing to do with the investigative reporting work of the conservative bloggers. But at the same time, they did nothing to distance themselves from the byproduct of that work.
“We’re clearly going to promote the truth and show Democrats didn’t do their research” into whether the Frost family should be receiving subsidized health care, said one Senate GOP aide. “We’re going to ride this story.”
That was yesterday afternoon, after all the right-wing arguments had been exposed as nonsense. And they still want to “ride this story,” as if it helps the right-wing cause.
There’s something deeply wrong with these people.