Limbaugh joins smear against 12-year-old

October 9, 2007

Much of the right is in full-smear mode against 12-year-old Graeme Frost and his family, so I suppose it stands to reason that Rush Limbaugh would step out in front of the mob.

So the bottom line for me is: They can’t rely on truth to make their case for their cause. They have to lie. Be it about me, be it about their own voters (such as the Frosts) be it about President Bush, they must lie — and anybody who stands in the way of their succeeding with that lie becomes an enemy, becomes a target. That’s where I and my buddies in talk radio come in. We are a thorn in their side because we represent the truth they are trying to hide, the truth that they are lying about, and they have to do something about it — and they have to do that by lying. […]

They send the kid out to lie. They filled this kid’s head with lies just as they have some of these soldiers about me. Put lies in the kid’s head or put it on the script that he’s reading. He goes out and reads it. He’s 12-years-old! They will use anybody! They’ll corrupt anybody, to get where they’re headed. That’s who they are, folks.

Do you ever feel like you’re stuck in a Twilight Zone episode?

Faiz responded:

The real “bottom line” is: Rush propagates baseless information from a “freeper” to attack a 12-year old, fails to determine the facts for himself, and then accuses others of not being able to “rely on truth to make their case.”

When right-wingers attack soldiers who disagree with them on Iraq or kids who disagree with them on health care, that is indeed where Rush and his “hate radio” buddies “come in.” The right-wing attack machine personally assaults anyone for daring to disagree.

And while it’s clearly the right-wing base that’s driving this vile attack, let’s not lose sight of the Republican establishment’s role.

On Monday, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid accused GOP leadership aides of “pushing falsehood” in an effort to distract from the political battle over S-CHIP.

“This is a perverse distraction from the issue at hand,” said Jim Manley, a spokesman for Reid, D-Nev. “Instead of debating the merits of providing health care to children, some in GOP leadership and their right-wing friends would rather attack a 12-year-old boy and his sister who were in a horrific car accident.”

Manley cited an e-mail sent to reporters by a Senate Republican leadership aide, summing up recent blog traffic about the boy’s family. A spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., declined to comment on Manley’s charge that GOP aides were complicit in spreading disparaging information about Frosts.

Stay tuned.

Does anyone else feel like they’re stuck in a badly written parody of Dickens?

  • I often feel like I’m stuck in a Monty Python episode.

    But as for the Twilight Zone,

    “That’s a GOOD thing you did, George, invading that country. A REAL GOOD thing.”

  • When Dickens was 12 years old he worked 12 hours a day in a factory to which he walked an hour to and an hour from. On Sundays he visited his dad in debtor’s prison. Now if Graeme would just do that like any good Republican would do, he could afford private health insurance.

  • Rush lies about lying and that’s all he’s good for. Even when you show him the facts and evidence that prove he’s lying…he says, ” you’re lying”. These hypocrites have no shame and lie constantly for each other. I believe the country (except for the 30% dead enders, who really are 30% dead) has had enough of republicans. We’ve seen 1st hand what they really are, how mean spirited and destructive to our democracy they’ve become and lying is the only way they can gather support. They can ignore the polls all they want but the only way they will win elections now is to cheat and steal them and this they will most certainly try to do because they have no morals and are shameless.

  • Nothing like having raving lunatics with millions of listeners.

    From a guy (not me) who voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004…

    The majority of us have decided that the movers and shakers in the GOP and the blogospheric right are certified lunatics who, in a decent and sane society, we would have in controlled environments in rocking chairs under shade trees for most of the day, wheeled in at night for tapioca pudding and some karaoke.

    http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=8799

  • As the holiday season’s are approaching with the inexorability of continental drift, I feel called to sum up the neoconspiratorial right’s position vis a vis health care for both children [ and adults ]…

    “Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?
    If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”

    God help us, every one.

  • I wonder what it would cost the Frost’s to buy health insurance for the whole family on the private market. Given their multiple pre-existing conditions, could they even find any suppliers? Have any of the right-wingers presented that information as part of their “case” against the Frost family?

  • Rush continues to serve his purpose, by making the left foam with rage. He is a useful idiot that the right manipulates like a blunt instrument, rather than feeling any real kinship with him. However, if you lie down with swine, expect to wake up with an appetite for slops. Rush’s more than passing resemblance to a hog is no accident, and Republicans might well find it harder than they thought to shake off the Limbaugh tarbaby.

    Seriously, though – who thinks any of the candidates, on either side, is going to unite this bitterly divided country? The atmosphere between Republican and Democrat, at least out on the hustings, is more like civil war than agreeing to disagree.

  • “Do you ever feel like you’re stuck in a Twilight Zone episode?”

    Not with this sort of thing. I’m still a young man, but as I’ve grown up, this sort of nonsense has only gotten worse, it seems. One side is accepting reality; the other is propagating a fantasy. There are facts that are obvious and indisputable, like budget numbers and statistics about causalities in Iraq. Opinions can be argued, as we all know, but the facts are the facts. If they are not acknowledging what the rest of the world sees, either they are lying, or they are delusional. I don’t see another way to describe the situation.

  • I thought it was bad when Reagan was elected – I knew all his promises were false. I grew up looking at that and wondering what could be about the ‘American Morning’ and just figured people would learn eventually.

    During the Clinton years, we got to hear even more hate and spittle, and now, with them in power, they still blame Democrats for all that’s ‘gone wrong’, even though it’s been Republicans in control of everything that went wrong.

    It gets to the point that people who are good people, start repeating the points because that’s what they heard, and they shouldn’t be expected to look it up themselves.

    In another world, I wouldn’t even be on the side of Clinton or Richardson, and yet… Here we are.

  • Missing as always is the Democratic leadership, but this time it really makes me sick. They let a 12-year-old boy stick up for them and when Limbaugh and the long knives come out – as they always do – the Democrats cower.
    What Democrat has stood forth to condemn attacks on this kid – this kid who stood up and tried to help them? I would think defending a 12-year-old would help your cause politically, but I don’t even care about that. It is simply the right thing to do. How can the Democratic leadership simply sit?
    You hear a lot about how the Democrats supposedly won’t support the troops, but I’m left wondering whom they do support.
    The last month of rhetorical sideshows has taught me a lot.
    – Republicans attack MoveOn.org for running an advertisement. Democrats cower and support condemning the organization. We learn that the Democratic leadership won’t stand up for its political base, but – you know what – MoveOn is a political group and should probably be ready to take a shot to the chin once in a while.
    – Democrats attack Rush Limbaugh for saying the soldiers who want out us of Iraq are “phony soldiers.” Republicans stand up for Rush, sponsor a resolution praising him. The Democratic leadership slinks away.
    – Democrats let a little kid shill for their health-care plan. Freepers attack, and the Democratic leadership lets the tyke twist in the wind.
    I’ve learned that when things get tough, Republicans stand up for their friends, even if it makes them look silly. Democrats don’t stand up for their friends, they don’t stand up to their enemies, they don’t defend either the powerful or the weak.

  • Ronn Zealot has it exactly right. Just exactly what the Dim-Dems think they’re doing or accomplishing is a mystery, certainly to me. Not one of them has a spine it seems.

    The pervasive nastiness, meaness, and divisiveness that has become our political scene since the days of Reagan has desensitized many to just how corrosive almost thirty years of this ‘take no prisoners’ approach has become – much like Hollywood has densitized us all to gratuitous violence with their juvenile ‘action/adventure’ genre. “Oh, Lush lied again? Well, that’s just business as usual. Ignore him, he only has millions of disciples… BTW, would you like a copy of my White Paper on recycling toilet paper?” That’s the typical Dim-Dem candidate response to another slur, smear, lie, inuendo, or manufactured distraction the Rethugs are so good at.

    The Dim-Dems stand for nothing, will defend nothing, and will do nothing. On what basis do they dare call themselves a political party? They wander around like refugees in shock not knowing who they are, where they’ve come from nor where they’re going. The Rethugs behave like the well organized crime syndicate they are, and they’re really the only show in town. They rule, much as it pains me to say it. I’m really getting a laugh from the requests for money the Dim-Dems endlessly send. Their line is “We need more Dim-Dems in Congress.”

    Uh-huh. Right. Ask me when you find your brain, your conscience, and your spine.

  • I dont seem to understand US society … how is this not actionable as slander, by the Frosts (of course, they can’t afford a lawyer themselves, but presumably some decent Democratic lawyer could take it on as pro-bono work?)

  • Ronn @ 13: This is cowering???

    From the NYT: Democrats, including the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, have risen to the Frosts’ defense, saying they earn about $45,000 a year and are precisely the type of working-poor Americans that the program was intended to help.

    Ms. Pelosi on Tuesday said, “I think it’s really a sad statement about how bankrupt some of these people are in their arguments against S-chip that they would attack a 12-year-old boy.”

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  • Rush Limbaugh must have read Hitler’s Mein Kampf. The man he most resembles is Joseph Geoblels, Hitler’s Propaganda Minister. Geoblels theory was “If you tell a lie loud enough and long enough people will believe it”

    Limbaugh is a despicable person who says he is an entertainer when he really is the propaganda minister for the Republican party. I don’t think he has ever spoken the truth.

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