Frost Smear: Coming from Republican Leadership; Repeated by CNN
Thu Oct 11, 2007 at 09:15:03 AM PDT
Unbelievable. It appears that 'Fox Lite' has decided to jump in with it's own 'Fair and Balanced' take on the Frosts' smear campaign. And who is to blame for all of this? Why the Democrats of course. John Roberts 'Reports':
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?
A tactical error? You gotta be kidding me. A family that is helped by a government program decides to speak out for the same program - using their own words - and according to CNN - It's the Dems fault that they are smeared.
CNN Political analyst goes further:
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.
Over at the Carpetbagger Report, they have this to say about CNN's piling on:
First, we know, and CNN should know, that the attacks on the Frost family are false. CNN reported that the accusations "may be exaggerated." One wonders what more proof the network needs.
Second, CNN featured misguided commentary from analyst that 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?
And third, blaming Congress 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.
Let's be crystal clear here. The Frosts' are the perfect spokespersons for this program. The S-CHIP program was designed to help out people exactly in their situation. Working lower-middle class families, contributing to society and through no fault of their own, find themselves financially unable (unless they completely liquidate their assets) to pay for said insurance. The right-wing would rather remove these folks from contributing to the economy in a productive way, than have the government - allegedly of, by and for the people - help keep them maintain that productivity.
I am so ticked off a CNN right now that I can barely type this. Obviously, John Roberts makes so much money and has such fine health care that he can't even imagine that 1/6 people in this country cannot get the same care. And many of these are working, productive members of the society. They would much rather have these people become destitute than have the government, God forbid, use their tax dollars to help them out.
CNN is far worse than Malkin. At least with her, one knows you are going to get idealogical purity. CNN pretends to be a 'news organization', but instead, muddies the waters to smear the Democrats and the Frosts' instead of addressing the issue that millions of working class Americans have to choose between health care and food and shelter every day.
I'm going to ask for two things from this community. One, that this diary be recommended so that we can swarm CNN and let them know what we think about this. Two, that someone post links contacts at CNN so that I can update the diary with those links. When sending letters or e-mail, please remember to be polite and professional.
UPDATE 1: The CNN contact link is: http://www.cnn.com/...
UPDATE 2: CNN feedback form can be found here: http://www.cnn.com/...
UPDATE 3: Several commenters have pointed out that there is real story in the possibility that this smear was launched within the office of the Senate Minority Leader. This would be a source of real journalistic investigation and that certainly would be the behavior if this were a Democratic smear. You may want to mention that in your responses.
UPDATE 4: (H/T to gchaucer) Well, well, well...
It turns out that Think Progress has an e-mail from a Mitch McConnell (Senate Minority Leader) which states:
Seen the latest blogswarm? Apparently, there’s more to the story on the kid (Graeme Frost) that did the Dems’ radio response on SCHIP. Bloggers have done a little digging and turned up that the Dad owns his own business (and the building it’s in), seems to have some commercial rental income and Graeme and a sister go to a private school that, according to its website, costs about $20k a year ‹for each kid‹ despite the news profiles reporting a family income of only $45k for the Frosts. Could the Dems really have done that bad of a job vetting this family?
So, the staffer claims that the 'Dems' didn't 'vet' the Frost family very well and surprise, surprise, those very words come out of John Roberts' mouth. So it's not that he is lazy, it is that he is a Republican shill connected directly to the office of the Senate Minority Leader. CNN is allowing Republican stenography.
Think Progress adds:
The New York Times reported yesterday that "an aide" to Sen. McConnell "expressed relief that his office had not issued a press release criticizing the Frosts." No, what the McConnell staffer did was worse — he used the power and privilege of the Senate office to secretly propagate a baseless smear campaign against a 12-year old boy and his family simply because they disagreed on policy.
This smear is coming directly from the Republican leadership.
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