CNN’s John Roberts reported: “Some of the accusations [against the Frosts] may be exaggerated or false. But did the Democrats make a tactical error in holding up Graeme as their poster child?”<\/p>\n
A CNN political analyst then placed the blame squarely on the Democrats’ shoulders: “I think in this instance what happened was the Democrats didn’t do as much of a vetting as they could have done on this young man, his situation, his family…. More and more, Congress is acting less like a deliberative legislative body, and more like a political campaign. We’ve been seeing the politicization of every aspect of government.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This was CNN’s first and only coverage of the right-wing smear — and it was breathtakingly stupid.<\/p>\n
First, we know, and CNN should<\/i> know, that the attacks on the Frost family are<\/i> false. CNN reported that the accusations “may be exaggerated.” One wonders what more proof the network needs.<\/p>\n
Second, CNN featured misguided commentary from an analyst who went unidentified, who argued that Dems didn’t “vet” the Frosts. Huh? Everything we’ve learned suggests the Frosts are the perfect example of a family who qualifies for S-CHIP assistance. Why would CNN contribute to the attack with a bogus charge?<\/p>\n
And third, blaming Congress<\/i> for the politicization of every aspect of government, when the Bush administration has done exactly that since Day One, suggests CNN’s standards for accuracy have dropped somewhere between Fox News and the Free Republic.
\n
\nCongress hasn’t been acting like a “deliberative legislative body”? Isn’t the S-CHIP debate an example of the polar opposite? Lawmakers held substantive hearings, made compromises, and passed a good bill with broad bipartisan support. It was quickly endorsed by governors in both parties, the medical community, and children’s advocates. This isn’t the “politicization” of government; it’s the opposite.<\/p>\n
The point of this nonsensical piece is that Malkin & Co. are right — if Dems are going to highlight the plight of a struggling American family, it’s obviously the Dems’ fault if smear artists try to ruin that family.<\/p>\n
It’s admittedly an imprecise analogy, but by this logic, CNN should hold the White House responsible for MoveOn.org’s “Betray Us” ad. After all, if the Bush gang wanted to use Gen. Petraeus to promote the president’s Iraq policy, it’s obviously the president’s fault if administration critics question the general’s credibility.<\/p>\n
To borrow Prof. DeLong’s line, “Why Oh Why Can’t We Have a Better Press Corps?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Over the course of the week, it’s been unquestionably obvious, even to many conservatives, that smearing 12-year-old Graeme Frost and his family has been a huge mistake. The right not only launched a vicious smear of a seventh-grader, it more importantly did so with falsehoods. Several traditional news outlets — including Time, the New York […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}