Graeme Frost & Why I’m Ashamed to Be a Blogger Today (Update III)
The vicious underbelly of the blogosphere is in full-howl display over the story of Graeme Frost, the 12-year-old who gave a Democratic Party radio rebuttal to President Bush’s veto of a bill to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program that had passed Congress with broad bipartisan support.
Before you could say “Michelle Malkin,” conservative and right-wing bloggers and talk-show blatherers were dumping all over the Frost family because Graeme and sister Gemma were eligible for the Maryland version of S-CHIP. It seems that this middle-class family could not meet all of the medical expense following a serious car crash although they live in a semi-palatial $400,000 house with a frickin’ granite kitchen counter, have a newish SUV in the driveway and the youngsters attend an exclusive private school costing $20,000 a year apiece!!!
In point of fact, the Frosts are all too typical of middle-class families (one or two of whom might include Republican moms and dads) who are getting squeezed big time these days because of long-term economic trends and the “compassionate conservatism” of the Bush administration.
As it happens, the school that Graeme attends is not exclusive, many of its students receive financial aid, and his share of tuition apparently is only $500 a year.
Meanwhile, Gemma attends a special-needs private school because of a brain injury from the crash, but the state picks up the entire $23,000 a year tab.
Oh, and the Frosts bought their house for $55,000 in 1991 and made a combined $45,000 last year. (I don’t know about the kitchen counter, but who cares?)
Fact checking is an anomaly for most bloggers no matter their political persuasion and even for a supposedly established journo like Malkin, who should know better and probably does. But what Malkin knows best of all is that her red-meat constituency needs to be fed, whether it is calling people who question an Army general traitors one day or swift-boating a child the next.
Liberal blogger Ezra Klein, who in 2005 treated a young lad with far more deference when Republicans used him to promote Social Security reform, certainly speaks for me when he writes of the larger context:
“This is not politics. This is, in symbolism and emotion, a violent group ritual. It is savages tearing at the body of a captured enemy. It is the group reminding itself that the Other is always disingenuous, always evil, always lying, always pitiful and pathetic and grotesque. It is a bonding experience — the collaborative nature of these hateful orgies proves that much — in which the enemy is exposed as base and vile and then ripped apart by the community. In that way, it sustains itself, each attack preemptively justifying the next vicious assault, justifying the whole hateful edifice on which their politics rest.”
Incidentally, I believe that Graeme’s parents made a huge if well-meaning mistake in letting the Democrats use him to shill for S-CHIP. I know a kid whose mother pushed him into appearing on a popular MTV show and he still hasn’t recovered from the fallout of being a television star one day and a just another teenager with zits the next.
It’s one thing for a blogger to help try to kill a health-care program because he or she believes that it is an end-run toward national health care, or for any number of sound if arguable reasons.
But that does not excuse piling on a defenseless 12-year-old and further discredits the blogosphere as a place where wing-nuttery of the most malicious kind is encouraged and celebrated.
UPDATE: Also be sure to read:
–Capitol Feud: A 12-Year-Old Is the Fodder
–Frost family draws ire of conservatives
–The Loony Brigade
–Insurance bill debate focuses on Frost family
–Does This Truly Represent the State of Politics in America?
–John Cole notes how a 12-year-old’s verbal attackers now say they are victims and seemingly “backing off” in some areas.
UPDATE II: Ed Morrissey, one of the Internet’s top conservative bloggers and a talk show host, has a MUST-READ post that must be read IN-FULL. Quoting it takes it out of context, but we’ll use a small portion. He first criticizes the Democrats’ use of a 12-year-old as “demagoguing” and notes some facts about the family, then writes:
However, the response on the Right sometimes outstripped reason. Rather than just argue the facts, some in the comments section here and elsewhere went too far in speculating about finances and motives of the Frost family. Certainly, their argument was fair game, as well as their claim on federal assistance, which is after all public money. The S-CHIP debate doesn’t just focus on the Frosts, though (and we find out that the expansion argument wasn’t even relevant to them). We have plenty of reasons to oppose the S-CHIP expansion that have little to do with the Frosts, and we should be focusing on policy, not personal anecdotes.
The Frosts volunteered to serve as the poster family for this debate, but they have been exploited by partisans on both sides of the argument. The Frosts will have S-CHIP regardless of whether the veto gets upheld or not. Let’s leave the Frosts alone and get back to the real policy debate — and ask ourselves why we’re taking $30 billion from poor and working-class Americans to subsidize health care for people better off than they are, for “children” in their twenties, and for people whose choices are not our responsibility.
Read it in its entirety.
UPDATE III: Now a challenge to debate the issues, not personalities.
63 Responses to “Graeme Frost & Why I’m Ashamed to Be a Blogger Today (Update III)”
Sam,
While I don’t take it as far as cosmo, I did post this on my blog a while back.
Tully,
When about 90% of your criticism does stick to criticizing Democrats you are open to being considered partisan for the Republicans. Not accusing, just pointing out that the overwhelming majority of your posts here stick to pretty much one side. I’m also not denying that I criticize Republicans more than Democrats.
In addition you are definitely exaggerating when you say that no one wants to kill SCHIP. Republican think tanks such as the Hoover Institute, AEI and Cato don’t believe in the continued existence of any social programs and their influence is not exactly minuscule.
Just because someone runs a charity that focuses on international issues doesn’t not mean they “don’t give a damn about the needy in our own society”. The one does not mean the other. There are many issues that are being addressed in this country by numerous grps already and so some people direct their energies outside. But to assume that means they don’t care about americans is just silly.
[...] the right-winger blowhards who pulled the rug out from under the people who opposed expanding S-CHIP for legitimate if arguable reasons finally are [...]
Sam:
It’s not an assumption, it’s looking at the facts- and Jim’s link is a good example.
I don’t really care what’s in ‘the hearts of men.’ That’s between themselves, their consciences, and if they have a deity to shrive to. I care what people do, in the philosophically material sense, not what they claim.
This is what is wrong w most politics. People vote for hacks who say they’ll do something, but if the guy or gal does not do it, they refuse to punish them by voting them out of office, because the other guy’s worse.
Cosmo:
When the blogposts and the majority of the commenters focus 99.9% of the time on criticism of the GOP (or criticism of the Dems for not being left enough, esp on the war), then you’re going to see some of us focusing more on where we think the criticism should be applied to the Dems for not being moderate. That’s not partisanship, that’s called pushback.
Their influence overall may not be miniscule, but I’d say their ability to influence this particular debate in that direction certainly is. What Tully is pointing to is the fact that neither Bush’s proposal nor the GOP alternative bill on SCHIP come even close to gutting SCHIP- in fact both include expansion of the funding for it. So there is no alternative on the table by anyone in either party or either branch of govt which would in any way put the existing program in danger.
CS: You are quoting from someone else, not me.
However, since the R’s and Bush have dominated policy this century, and our nation is in a mess, the odds are likely that you’ll see more crit of the dominant folk.
However, 99.9% is an exaggeration, certainly on this blog.
Sorry cosmo, you’re right in that my response should have been directed toward Jim.
I’ll grant you the exaggeration on the 99.9% claim- but if you take out a few conservative commenters (who are the ones being criticized as partisan), it certainly leans pretty heavily that way (esp if you take into consideration that I’m also discounting criticism of the Dems for not being liberal enough). Perhaps I’m odd to think that a moderate blog would apply the same standard toward the conservative and liberal side, to criticize both when they lean toward their wings- and to give neither side the benefit of the doubt when it comes to tactics and ethics.
CS: again, I think it’s the times. If Hillary were Prez and presiding over the Iraq disaster the reverse wd be true.
I recall Carter and Bill Clinton getting the bulk of criticism when Dems ruled, and even Bush 1.
Only Reagan, w his odd teflon, ever seemed to miss that.
[...] debate over expanding the S-CHIP program and health-care reform in general being drowned out in the hysteria over Graeme [...]
[...] Frost, of course, is the 12-year-old who gave a Democratic Party radio rebuttal to President Bush’s veto of a bill to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program that had passed Congress with broad bipartisan support. [...]
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