12 Year Old Boys are “Fair Game”

Posted by Mary Mancini on October 11, 2007 under Uncategorized |

There’s no hope for Republicans who hook their public policy stars to mouth-pieces like Rush Limbaugh and Michelle Malkin. They’re all going to hell. But more on that later.

You thought it was bad when Max Cleland got it. Now they’re attacking a 12-year-old disabled boy. They’re so focused on proving the opposition wrong that they’ll use lies and intimidation of people they supposedly champion - working families - to do so.

A 12-year old boy named Graeme Frost, who used SCHIP benefits to receive care after his family was in a car accident and he was near death, was chosen to give the Democratic weekly radio address response the Saturday following President Bush’s veto of the program’s expansion. “I don’t know why President Bush wants to stop kids who really need help from getting CHIP,” said the boy. “All I know is I have some really good doctors…and I’m glad I could see them because of the Children’s Health Program.”

A few days after the he spoke, the kooks began their usual campaign of attacking, in this case the little boy, instead of defending. Why? Because President Bush’s veto, like much of his public policy, is indefensible. An “anonymous” poster over at the Free Republic started it by claiming that the Frost family was rich and that Graeme and sister, who was also badly injured in the wreck, went to wealthy private schools. Then they published their home address. What part of “there are crazy people in this country who take this stuff way too seriously and might actually pay the family ‘a little visit,’” don’t they understand? The smear was quickly picked up by The National Review, Michelle Malkin, the Weekly Standard blog, Rush Limbaugh, and others who used the distorted claims to attack the Frost family.

“The boy is fair game,” said National Review’s Mark Steyn.

Like a good journalist, Malkin decided to see for herself and went to the boy’s neighborhood. She was going to prove, by golly, that he and his family were taking advantage of the federal government even if she had to completely ignore the nuance of the story to do so. What she found was that the Frosts own their own home in a neighborhood where a house recently sold for half a mil, Mr. Frost owns his own business, and the children went to an elite private school. Case closed. Clearly, the devil woman found the truth - the Frost family are the 2007 version of Reagan’s “welfare queen.”

The problem is, Malkin’s a bad journalist. While each of the rabid right’s assertions about the Frost family are true, the context has been conveniently ignored. Mr. Frost is a woodworker and he and his wife’s combined incomes totals between $45,000 and $50,000 a year, which makes them eligible for the SCHIP. Graeme and his sister do attend private schools, but the Frosts pay only $500 a year for the boy due to a scholarship and nothing for the girl (the state pays the entire cost because of the injuries sustained from the accident. Their house was bought in 1990 for $55,000. The family has two mortgages - the other is on a commercial property - and one friend describes the family as “struggling.” (Hat Tip: The Center for American Progress)

SCHIP is designed exactly for families like the Frosts - they make too much money for Medicaid but can’t afford private insurance. The story here? Another successful government program.

Now, let’s get back to Republicans who hook their public policy stars to mouth-pieces like Rush Limbaugh and Michelle Malkin. Think Progress is reporting today that Sen. McConnell’s communications director Don Stewart was “complicit in spreading disparaging information about the Frosts.”