Time Magazine: Graeme Frost Was “Swiftboated”
The mainstream news media has been edging into covering the Graeme Frost controversy bit by bit – and today Time Magazine has come out and flatly said it: 12-year-old Graeme Frost was “swiftboated.”
And, indeed, welcome to the 21st century where politics seems to revolve around targeting those who disagree with you and working hard to slap negative labels on them so their actual debating points on policy are seemingly forgotten, or you try to put them on the defensive. (We just got an email from a reader who insisted this site is only running one take on this subject. This is typical of the approach. He somehow forgot to mention THIS POST we ran that criticized the analyses of several writers on this site. He also apparently forgot the links here to posts and articles of sites who don’t agree with us.).
Time’s Karen Tumulty writes:
If you listen closely to the two-minute radio address that 12-year-old Graeme Frost delivered last week for the Democrats, you can hear the lingering effects of the 2004 car crash that put him into a coma for a week and left one of his vocal chords paralyzed. “Most kids my age probably haven’t heard of CHIP, the Children’s Health Insurance Program,” he says in a voice that sounds weak and stressed. “But I know all about it, because if it weren’t for CHIP, I might not be here today.”
Graeme, whose sister suffered worse brain injuries when their family SUV hit a patch of black ice, was making an appeal for President Bush to reconsider his veto of legislation that would have expanded the program designed to provide health coverage to children of the working poor — those who are too rich to qualify for Medicaid, but unable to afford private insurance.
That made it clear that he would be a formidable poster boy for Mr. Bush’s veto. So, in retrospect, what followed is not surprising given the depths to which American politics has sunk:
Since then, Frost and his family have been introduced first-hand to something else that most kids his age haven’t: the reality of how brutal partisan politics can be in the Internet age.
Time then recounts some of the details about the charges made about the kid and his family. And the (still ongoing) efforts to neutralize them as is now the custom in American politics (you don’t debate the ideas and the policies you try to discredit the person who dares outline the ideas and differs with the policy and you can reap enormous personal popularity from that since conflict and rage sells and policy discussion and debate is to so some boooring and so oh so 20th century).
But, Tumulty notes, there is a bit of a hitch with what those who’ve gone after Frost and his family have contended:
It turns out, however, that not everything about the Frosts’ life pops up on a Google search. While Graeme does attend a private school, he does so on scholarship. Halsey Frost is a self-employed woodworker; he and his wife say they earn between $45,000 and $50,000 a year to provide for their family of six. Their 1936 rowhouse was purchased in 1990 for $55,000. It was vacant and in a run-down neighborhood that has improved since then, in part because of people like themselves who took a chance. It is now assessed at $263,140, though under state law the value of that asset is not taken into account in determining their eligibility for SCHIP. And while they are still uninsured, they claim it is most certainly not by choice. Bonnie Frost says the last time she priced health coverage, she learned it would cost them $1,200 a month.
In short, just as the radio spot claimed, the Frosts are precisely the kind of people that the SCHIP program was intended to help.
But now, according to Time, the critics who’ve gone after Frost and his family to in one sense have indeed “won.”
After giving a few interviews, Halsey and Bonnie Frost now say they don’t want to say anything more, though network camera crews have planted themselves in front of their house.
Halsey did have this to say in an e-mail to me:
“My son Graeme has helped put on a human face, that of a young boy, representing the needs of children and families across this nation. We are a hard working family that has stepped forward to support SCHIP. Mudslinging from the fringe has now been directed at the messenger. To be smeared all over the Internet and receive nasty e-mail — my family does not deserve this retribution. It is both shameful and pathetic.
“Driven by a most dubious agenda, shortsighted cut-and-paste bloggers, lacking all the facts, have made a feeble attempt at being crack reporters. This is an aberrant attempt to distract the American people from what the real issues are. Hard working American families need affordable health insurance.
“I find it morally reprehensible, and the act of a true coward, to publicly (world wide) smear a man and his family and not sign one’s own real name to what they have written. I sign my name to what I write.
Many Americans — including some non-lockstep Republicans who DO believe in debating on issues and not destroying those who dare stand up to a policy or a President will likely say “ditto” to that.
And Time’s writer ends with this:
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.
Ditto…
A CROSS SECTION OF OTHER VIEWS:
—Townhall: SCHIP, Graeme Frost, and the Bloggers
—The Frosts Demonstrate Why We Need Single Payer Health Care
—Conservatives Slam 12-year-old
—Newsbusters: Baltimore Sun Smears Conservative Bloggers Over SCHIP Scrutiny
—The Heretik (who always proves a picture is worth a thousand words)
–John Cole
47 Responses to “Time Magazine: Graeme Frost Was “Swiftboated””
Joe: Wow, because TIME and (liberal) Tumulty say the kid is being swiftboated, it must be true?
With the (perhaps) exception of a few deranged types (who exist on both sides), no one has claimed Graeme’s is not who he says he is (as was the case with Kerry, where the SBVT attacked much of Kerry’s record). Nor has anyone gone after Graeme himself, saying that he is a bad person or unfit for position X or Y, as was the case with Kerry where the SBVT argued that Kerry was unfit to be President.
The attacks and criticism have been aimed at his parents (for choosing a lifestyle that doesn’t include money for health care), a system that allows the parents to receive free health insurance (despite the assets they have that could be used to purchase health insurance), and the Democrats who trotted Graeme out to serve as tools in a partisan philosophical argument and who scream “ABSOLUTE MORAL AUTHORITY, ABSOLUTE MORAL AUTHORITY” to shut down those who dare argue the substance of the Democrats claims. You know Graeme isn’t being targeted, but that doesn’t stop you and your fellows from foisting that untruth on the uninformed public in hopes of further tarnishing your opponents. (perhaps your side sleeps well at night in the same way Marion Jones and Barry Bonds sleep well, telling themselves the end result justifies all sorts of otherwise objectionable behavior).
By the way, even though you didn’t intend it, you’re probably right in that ‘swiftboating’ does apply to this situation… as swiftboating being defined as one side accusing the other side of not playing fair in order to avoid defending against the other side’s legitimate arguments. Rather than answer his critics, Kerry and his supporters yelled ‘unfair’… just as the Democrats are doing now. And why not? Rather than defend the merits of affirmative action, Democrats just yell ‘racist’ and ‘sexist’. Rather than defend the merits of same sex marriage, Democrats yell ‘homophobe’, and rather than defend the merits of expanding SCHIP, the Democrats prefer to accuse the GOP of swiftboating’. As long as it works, you’ll keep doing it.
Wow,
Are there going to be more than 20 posts about a virtual non-story before we see a post on something such as a California judge ruling that the government cannot investigate identify theft if the thief is an illegal alien. Or maybe seeing a post on the State of New York deciding that it can set immigration policy for the U.S.? Or maybe a post on the trillion dollar tax increase proposed by the Democrats for 2009?
I guess expanding the government so that former hippies can live they way that they want to is much more important than anything else happening in the world today.
Please ,someone explain how the U.S. can have open borders and a massive welfare state at the same time?
You see, it’s not swift-boating because the kid’s parents
Hmm. Sorry about the formatting.
The Democrats have no shame, all right.
Superdestroyer, I’m aware of the judge’s ruling. The Ninth Circus has struck again, it seems.
You stand behind the kid like a human shield and then complain when he takes a bullet. Absolutely pathetic. Mr. Dooley never imagined that any politician could be so much of a coward as to hide behind a child rather than make their own arguments for themselves. Pathetic.
Former hippies!!!
Once people reach a certain age, it is hard to call them hippies. The Frost’s look like former hippies or flower children. Who else would name their child Graeme? If had been born in the western U.S. they would be running a woodworking business in Berkley or a crystal design store in Sedona.
The real question is why should they have the same quality of life as someone who makes about the same amount of money working as a policeman in Baltimore?
Better former hippies tahn spoiled rich kids from Maine and Texas. Male cheerleader as Commander in Chief – Hoorah!!
Wow, the righties are sure shrill today. It is now documented that smearing began at the Senate Minority leaders office, Ms. Malkin refuses to accept the policy debate she says she’s been demanding, and almost every single one of the allegations made by the right wing media machine have been proven wrong. Don’t be salty that some parents put their kid up to advocate for a program that saved them from financial ruin. Don’t blame them for a system that is so dysfunctional that it discourages entrepreneurship and makes coverage unaffordable to the middle class. Instead, shoot the messenger and then get hysterical when you are called to the mat on it. Nice!
Rudi – what are you trying to say? Are cheerleaders in anyway less fit than football players to hold elective office? Perhaps you mean to insinuate that Mr. Bush is gay because he was a cheerleader?
Aren’t gays a large democrat constituency?
Ok, here is another question that many on the right have missed. It is mandatory that automobile insurance in Maryland (where the Frost’s live) pay for the medical expenses of those injuried in a car wreck. Why didn’t the care insurance of the Frost family pay for the medical bills. Did not not have care insurance (even though it is mandatory) or did they purchase the bare minimum and then quickly exceed their caps.
I had not though of this until I read that the care wreck was a single family accident and thus, no other driver to sue or to claim on the other driver’s insurance.
George, would you care to elaborate on “former hippies” or do you somehow think that that’s somehow an insult by itself?
JUst like the swiftboaters never stopped, our own crew. some of the commenter here never stop.
jUst accuse and run, only to accuse and run another day.
Pathetic is, indeed, the word, Venomous is another.
Also, another banner has been created, to avoid substance in discussion: human shield
There is no inherent difference between a boy telling his own personal story as an example of what the issues are and a politician, or other advocate, from the telling the story via particular or general examples.
To use another recent example: was Petraeus using his charts and graphs as a shield behind which to hide? You could say, also,that Pres. Bush hides behind the human shields of the military personnel in front of whom he delivers addresses.
There is a bit of show biz about all advocacy.
Those purporting to discuss the issues make their statements worthless as to substance by hiding behind the shields of jingoism and sloganeering.
I’m waiting for a new alphabet jingle to appear, like PC, BDS, etc. Those are shields of another kind.
Doma, I actually think that the dems did do wrong in using the boy, because I know that they knew full well what could happen, and I think the decent thing to do would have been to put an adult in that place to take the heat. Tell the same story, if need be, but shield the family. I have little faith in the idea that the dems weren’t expecting (and some maybe even hoping for) the possibility of this sort of reaction.
Now, what I find laughable is the idea that since the dems put him out there, THEY are the main wrongdoers, and not the vicious (mostly) bloggers. It’s like when abusive boyfriends blame their girlfriends for “provoking” them. Yeah, maybe the girl said something she knew could get you angry, it’s STILL your fault.
Mr. Moderate: Ms. Malkin refuses to accept the policy debate she says she’s been demanding,
I wonder what sort of person sees Michelle as other than totally discredited by this. Can someone explain why she shouldn’t have to take up Ezra Klein’s offer to debate the merits of that plan, in light of her voluminous bloviations about how the evil lefties used Graeme Frost to avoid that debate?
Yes, you have to be really deranged to believe that it’s the Democrats’ fault that the attacks from the right are so nasty.
Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh, McConnel, etc. are responsible for the crap they spew. Not Graeme, not his parents, not Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid. It is total bull **** and you guys know it.
I’m with George on this. Jesus Steve you really think thats the choice average americans should have to make, their homes or their healthcare? The Frosts are not lazy ne’er do wells. They are AVERAGE. Avg income, avg home, with kids and jobs. They are doing what people trying to be upwardly mobile do, they buy a house instead of throwing money down the drain renting. And they can’t do that and pay for healthcare. Does that not tell you something, maybe that there is a problem of some kind?
The GOP is crumbling, and its because of this utter disconnect from the situation real people get in thats causing it. You can cry about dem tricks and minorities that for some reason, I can’t imagine why, don’t vote republican, but the real reason is that conservatives are the ones living in a world of entitlement. Their answers to problems only generate more problems and are utterly devoid of the concept long term planning. Shut the gates and let the poor fend for themselves!
Even though we live in a stable and well run society that allows for the kind of economic growth and prosperity we have, there is no obligation for those who have made it to the top to ever feel for those at the bottom. Its not like they are your countrymen.
superdestroyer..
Graeme is a “hippie” name? One of William Wallace’s follower’s was named Graeme. It is an old and veberable name. Also spelled Graham for those not inclined to history or geneaology.
Please…
Ms. Malkin has no credibility to begin with. She is an attack-dog and nothing more. Coulter-lite if you will.
Lynx, I honestly think there’s a little 20-20 hindsight there. Not saying some Machiavellian (“Roveian?”) Dem might not have anticipated what would happen, but I wouldn’t have.
Are you really saying the reaction to Graeme Frost is not different from what we should reasonably expect these days?
Let’s say for the sake of argument that the Dems should have expected the “blowback”. What does it say about the GOP blogswarm? That it’s just business as usual to spread complete and utter codswallop and that’s okay?
It IS the Malkins that are responsible, period. Or… The Dems should have known wearing a skirt that short would cause the Wingnuts to assault them. That’s what they get for dressing so provocatively. They had it coming!
‘Who else would name their child Graeme? ‘
From anyone but Superdestroyer, this wd be self-reflexive humor.
That this is typed in seriousness kyboshes the very seriousness of the debate.
Pfft….
SD-
Some people look at a picture of the Frosts and just ‘know’ they’re hippies.
Just like, on another thread, some people just ‘know’ a voice on a phone belongs to an Afro-American. Having been classified, these people are, then, discredited by the mere fact of belonging to to certain groups.
This demosrates why nothing said by commenters who use this manner of judgement has any credibility.
Some people ;see’ bugs crawling on their skin when in the throes of mental illness. I wouldn’t go looking for incsecticide on that basis.
Neither wyould I pay the slightest attention to commenters who make judgements on such bizarre bases.
I laughed as well.
“What kind of name is that?”
“I don’t know SuperDestroyer”
Talk about over compensating.
It is more than just the appearance. It is the life choices that indicates a high probability that the Frost families has some very hippie like tendencies. The only odd part about them is that they ended up in Baltimore to do it instead of the standard flower children type places.
Lynx-
Intuiting the Dem’s motivation is well, intuitive.
I don’t know, but given that children have been paraded around the Capital for various ‘messaging” events, I can also accept the possibility that the depths of slime the opposition would descend to were unexpected.
What was the substantive reason for SCJ Roberts’s children to appear at his Senate hearings? I don’t remember anyone claiming that the children were illegimate offspring instead of being adoped. That’s what happened with MCCain’s ‘illegitimate’ daughter, and I thought discrediting the practice in that instance would have put a stop to it altogehter.
Now, of course, it’s a matter of hindsight.
Footnote:
I read on another blog that Malkin and her husband couldn’t get affordable health insurance because of pre-existing conditions. In her case, the condtion is being uunderweight. Irony of ironies, if true. Perhaps also, this may make debate unattractive.
Wouldn’t it be ironic, if she had chilfren that ended up on an SCHIP porgram!!
It is the life choices that indicates a high probability that the Frost families has some very hippie like tendencies.
What tendencies were those? Having a family, working hard at an entrepreneurial business, home ownership, or was it something else? Is it because they are (horror!) Democrats?
Weird. Someone writes a post about Time Magazine calling the swiftboating of the kid ‘swiftboating’ and he gets swiftboated for it?
I think that some of you just proved a point, but not necessarily the point you intended to prove.
Lynx–
It was actually Superdestroyer who brought up the whole “former hippie” thing. See the second comment.
Sam–
Many thanks for see what I meant despite my messed up formatting. It’s not unusual in America for people who make $50,000 a year to be unable to afford health insurance.
Harto–
Hear, hear!!!
George, I see, thanks for the explanation and my apologies for the snipe, I’m the child of former hippies and somewhat sensitive on the subject.
Only someone like SD could think being a hippie (assuming they were, which is far from clear, I know ex-hippies who own homes, but no current hippies) is a- an insult in and of itself and b- disqualifying you from…what? Giving an opinion?
SD Is upset that Cadillac comercials now use “hippie” music to sell American made luxury cars. Yesterdays hippies now drive Cadillacs(not Prius or Volvo), the end is near!!
Doma: ‘SD-
Some people look at a picture of the Frosts and just ‘know’ they’re hippies.
Just like, on another thread, some people just ‘know’ a voice on a phone belongs to an Afro-American. Having been classified, these people are, then, discredited by the mere fact of belonging to to certain groups.’
Yes, I recall that thread- a C-Span caller that SD, I think, thought was black, even though no one else heard a ‘black accent.’
Damn those nigras and hippies! They just don’t unnastand what President Nixon is doin’ for’em!
The real problem in this situation is that Bush is hiding behind “big government’ ideology, when he has done nothing since taking office but increase the size of government. He’s lost credibility because of HIS decision to offer new entitlements. Before the ’06 election, he never saw an earmark that he didn’t mind approving, never in fact vetoed a single appropriations bill-no matter how many ‘bridges to nowhere’ it contained.
He’s the wrong person to argue against socialized medicine and the wrong person to argue against increasing the size of government. What a joke.
The GOP will go down and go down badly if its spokespeople continue to side against the poor and middle class. They will not attract new voters by taking this stand, and also are driving folks away by avoiding debates in minority venues. This veto is a gift to the Democratic party, who probably wouldn’t win against a more moderate, big tent Republican party.
Brilliant idea, except they still have to live SOMEWHERE. And whatever money they received from selling their house would have to be put into a new place to live.
“It is more than just the appearance. It is the life choices that indicates a high probability that the Frost families has some very hippie like tendencies. The only odd part about them is that they ended up in Baltimore to do it instead of the standard flower children type places.”
Which life choices would those be, SD? Choosing to let their son be a spokesperson for SCHIP? Redoing their kitchen themselves? Sending their kids to private schools? I mean I didn’t notice anything in any of the accounts saying that they had a few acres of marijauna growing behind their house, or that they meditated twice daily while burning “Passion flower” incense!
My next-door neighbor in one place I lived was named Liberty. Her father, in his fifties or sixties, lives in Eureka (extreme northwestern California). Now there’s a real (ex-)hippie.
Oh, and in another place I used to live, there was a club in town frequented by a lot of ex-hippies, still wearing tie-dye clothing. The place had a stage with plenty of black lights as well as colored lights and posters. Shaun would love it because all live performances there featured introductions of the acts and intermission appearances by the club’s owner, featuring innumerable anti-Bush remarks.
“Very hippie like”? “a real (ex-)hippie”?
WELL, this “old hippie” enjoyed a productive, satisfying career that
allowedrequired me to retire at age 55. For the last 5 plus years I’ve been walking the golf course five days a week.Since I’ve gotten my index down to 10.6 maybe you two should reevaluate your definition of what a “old hippie” is.
“Peace Baby” and thanks for enlightening us on what old hippies are.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6BMSzdFQOs
i believe that this thread proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the rightwing hears what it wants to hear, and reads what it wants to read.
would you guys feel better if the story read that the parents were swiftboated?
why should anyone have to choose between owning a home and being able to afford health care?? stop trampling on the american dream.
yea…great, lifestyle they lead. both parents work…kids on scholarship…parents own a modest home and some rental property.
you go and tell them to sell their home and the rental property to pay for the medical care…go ahead…i dare ya.
tell mr frost to work 3 jobs, and mrs frost to work 2…so that the kids have no one to raise them.
the lack of any intellect in these posts is amazing.
[...] Joe Gandelman wrote a fantastic post today on “Time Magazine: Graeme Frost Was “Swiftboated—Here’s ONLY a quick extract“Most kids my age probably haven’t heard of CHIP, the Children’s Health Insurance Program,†he says in a voice that sounds weak and stressed. “But I know all about it, because if it weren’t for CHIP, I might not be here today.†… [...]
[...] Joe Gandelman wrote a fantastic post today on “Time Magazine: Graeme Frost Was “Swiftboated—Here’s ONLY a quick extract“Most kids my age probably haven’t heard of CHIP, the Children’s Health Insurance Program,†he says in a voice that sounds weak and stressed. “But I know all about it, because if it weren’t for CHIP, I might not be here today.†… [...]
[...] Joe Gandelman wrote a fantastic post today on “Time Magazine: Graeme Frost Was “Swiftboated—Here’s ONLY a quick extractThe Frosts Demonstrate Why We Need Single Payer Health Care Rush Limbaugh Conservatives Slam 12-year-old Newsbusters: Baltimore Sun Smears Conservative Bloggers Over SCHIP Scrutiny Democrats lash back on SCHIP … [...]
[...] Joe Gandelman wrote a fantastic post today on “Time Magazine: Graeme Frost Was “Swiftboated—Here’s ONLY a quick extractAnd, indeed, welcome to the 21st century where politics seems to revolve around targeting those who disagree with you and working hard to slap negative labels on them so their actual debating points on policy are seemingly forgotten, … [...]
[...] Joe Gandelman wrote an interesting post today on Time Magazine: Graeme Frost Was “Swiftboatedâ€Here’s a quick excerptHard working American families need affordable health insurance. “I find it morally reprehensible, and the act of a true coward, to publicly (world wide) smear a man and his family and not sign one’s own real name to what they have … [...]
[...] Joe Gandelman wrote an interesting post today on Time Magazine: Graeme Frost Was “Swiftboatedâ€Here’s a quick excerptAnd the (still ongoing) efforts to neutralize them as is now the custom in American politics (you don’t debate the ideas and the policies you try to discredit the person who dares outline the ideas and differs with the policy and you … [...]