Krugman on the anatomy on a smear
By Steve Benen Thursday Oct 11, 2007 7:17amPaul Krugman explains the big picture behind the right-wing smear of 12-year-old Graeme Frost and his family.
All in all, the Graeme Frost case is a perfect illustration of the modern right-wing political machine at work, and in particular its routine reliance on character assassination in place of honest debate. If service members oppose a Republican war, they’re “phony soldiers”; if Michael J. Fox opposes Bush policy on stem cells, he’s faking his Parkinson’s symptoms; if an injured 12-year-old child makes the case for a government health insurance program, he’s a fraud.
Meanwhile, leading conservative politicians, far from trying to distance themselves from these smears, rush to embrace them. And some people in the news media are still willing to be used as patsies.
Someone in the media had to say it; I'm glad it was Krugman.
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frist?
I guess their slogan is, If you can't beat them, beat them up.
Hillary Clinton was interviewed by Keith Olbermann last night and this was one of the topics. She had the correct view but she kept referring to Graeme Frost as a "young man." The only time in my experience when a 12 year old is referred to as "young man" is when the 7th grade Social Studies or English teacher has had enough.
With each smear campaign, more americans are getting to see the disgusting tactics of this group of demented individuals. By the time the election rolls around, I doubt there will be 20% registered Repukes. Right now they numbers are an abysmal 27% with the Dems at 38% and Registered Independents at 35%. Haven't they learned that using disgusting tactics revulses people? I guess they will realize it when they truly become "the third party" in this country.
The GOP days are numbered and we will see the total destruction of the Republican Party in our lifetimes. They're well on their way.
Yet another sign that the current neo-conservatism, new republican party is totally bankrupt and bereft. We must continue to let them hang by their own words. Keep poinint them out and don't let up.
mackiddo5 @ 5:
I meant pointing not poinint. Not enough coffee for me.
Goddam I love this man. He's been a courageous voice from before the Iraq criminal invasion and continues today.
And by the way, fuck John Roberts on CNN for repeating the "...should have vetted..." talking point.
Yay, Krugman. Every once in a great while, someone redeems my faith in humanity and reason and morality and civility.
Has anyone on the right explained how this is different than Bush surrounding himself with "snowflake children" to promote his veto of the embryonic stem cell bill?
No?
Figures.
And bravo to Carter. Scareborough and tucker's butt-boy Villy von Geist were poo-pooing Jimmy Carter for speaking out on Bush-Cheney. "In poor taste..." "...former presidents shouldn't talk bad about sitting presidents..." bull shit. The things the reichwing Conservative Christians hate the most are christians who actually walk in the footsteps of the Carpenter of Nazareth, which explains why they're reluctant to get behind Huckabee.
Krugman is the Edward R. Murrow of the Neocon Era.
Once again, Krugman opens up the stinking rotting carcass of the GOP so that everyone can get a wiff of the stank.
Don't forget Schiavo.
I'm listening to President Carter too. Isn't it funny that all the really smart presidents are from the Democratic party.
Way to go, Paul Krugman. He gets it consistently right every time. If it weren't for him and Keith Olbermann, I would have completely lost my faith in the mainstream new media. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are great, but they are comedians, not news people.
The wingnuts are so concerned about their tax dollars being wasted in saving this kid's life. But they never complain about the billions and billions of dollars that have disappeared into Iraq because of corruption.
We already know all this. The problem is that nothing is ever done about it. The media embraces these people as he said, yes, but where is the backlash against these enablers? Instead they seem to be getting richer. Rush Limbaugh is still on the air. All this seems like is just more talk to me. Sorry.
In other words, RIGHT-WING DINGBATS ‘SWIFT-DINGHY’ A TWELVE YEAR OLD
Hey, I really like Krugman, and his article on the right wing is right on, but he didn't mention how quickly the supposed main stram media are quick to copy anything that comes out of the right wing noise machine.
He mentioned CNN taking up the idea that the Democrats didn't vet the story enough, but naming the Outlet and not the reporter does a disservice to the liberals. It was CNN's John Roberts that practically quoted Michelle Malkin concerning the Democrat's not vetting the Frost case. These MSM "journalists" have to be mentioned by name as Bob Somerby does at The Daily Howler
Are there any republicans that do substance left? It's no surprise that the few with any brains are becoming liberals in deed if not in name.
The Corporate Media is a series of tubes through which shit flows.
We need a lot more like Krugman!
I actually am sad that most of what needs to be said in the mainstream media is left to only a few people like Mr. Krugman who's something of an outsider in the MSM. It's outrageous that "news" programs are more likely to invite brain dead people like Bill Kristol to talk and not Krugman.
xoites defends Constitution @ 22:
Actually, that's the internet. The Corporate Media is the big truck that just dumps shit on you.
Good column. What is it with the right wing that they can't deal with ideas, but have to go on a personal attack every time they disagree with someone? It's mean-spirited and un-Christian. It sure stifles debate.
Guido, OBGYN, Lover @ 14:
Don't worry....they'll be digging up that poor girl again, once the primaries are over.
"26 MN USA
What is it with the right wing that they can’t deal with ideas, but have to go on a personal attack every time they disagree with someone? It’s mean-spirited and un-Christian. It sure stifles debate."
Stifling debate is the entire point.
Damn that liberal media for trying to bring us the truth! What nerve!
When your agenda is to serve the interests of a relatively small albeit wealthy and powerful segment of the population, honest and open debate isn't really an option, is it?
Thanks Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity for coming to the defense of the citizens who need it the least. You are true American heros!
Krugman nails the mouth-breathers again.
The Washington Post has a similar opinion piece in today's paper.
Meanies And Hypocrites
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Friday, October 12, 2007; Page A17
Conservatives claim to be in favor of stable families, small businesses, hard work, private schools, investment and homeownership. So why in the world are so many on the right attacking the family of Graeme Frost?
Frost is the 12-year-old from Baltimore who delivered the Democrats' reply to a radio address by President Bush in September. The seventh-grader pleaded -- in vain, it turned out -- that the president not veto Congress's $35 billion expansion of the children's health care program known as SCHIP. A car crash in December 2004 left two of Halsey and Bonnie Frost's children comatose, Graeme with a brain stem injury and Gemma, his sister, with a cranial fracture.
The kids were treated, thanks to SCHIP. The Frosts spoke out so the public would know that real people lie behind the acronym.
Their reward was to be trashed on right-wing blogs and talk radio as if they were multimillionaires ripping off the system. The assault on the Frosts apparently began on the Free Republic Web site and quickly spread to National Review Online, Power Line and Michelle Malkin's blog, as well as Rush Limbaugh's radio show.
And of what were the Frosts guilty? Well, they own their own home, which they bought for $55,000 in 1990 and which is now worth about $260,000; they invested in a commercial property, valued at $160,000; Halsey Frost, a self-employed woodworker, once owned a small business that was dissolved in 1999; and Graeme attends a private school on scholarship. I rely here on facts reported this week in the Baltimore Sun and the New York Times, both of which set straight the more outlandish claims made by the Frosts' attackers.
The right is unapologetic. "The Democrats chose to outsource their airtime to a Seventh Grader," wrote National Review's Mark Steyn. "If a political party is desperate enough to send a boy to do a man's job, then the boy is fair game."
Okay, the Democrats are "fair game," but a 12-year-old? No wonder nobody talks about compassionate conservatism anymore.
<continued>
Soooo, Republicans can exploit "the troops" ad nauseum to prevent any criticism of the war, but Democrats can't use an injured kid to make a point about health care for struggling families. Wow. Just wow.
Okay, folks. What do we do to offer the Frost family support? I've been through medical care hell, and I know how hard it is. Have the lunatics on the right pile on has got to make it all that much worse.
MN USA @ 26:
The problem is our society is more like a badly-run high school now...each "clique" trying to be the "coolest" and making fun of anyone not a member of their little group. The "jocks (right-wingers)" tease and torment the "nerds (progressives)" and the "punk-goths (neo-cons)" make fun of the "flower-children (left-wingers)". And the faculty (American public) take no steps to stop it, because they think, "well, they're just being kids (political activists)."
Very sad the state this nation has fallen into...
GonzoD @ 23:
That was a good article! It is what should have been said a few days ago. It’s kind of funny but I made and you all made the same points right here and here and here and here and here on C+L on Monday. Here are comments made by me and as I was look through them I noticed that a lot of the folks here were saying the same thing. We seem to be a little quicker on the draw … so to speak. Maybe we could get a job at the NYT…. No, never mind. That would be too much like work. Oh, sorry we don’t mention the “W” word here do we.
Maybe it would be a good idea to email Jack Cafertee and let him know how you feel. http://www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form4.html?88 Here is an email address for him. And here is another address for him: caffertyfile@cnn.com
“Jack where were you when Malkin and her ilk were spewing and degrading this poor family? At least somebody http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/opinion/12krugman.html?_r=1&ref=opinio... was up to the task. I can’t wait to see your comments on the Cafferty File later today on Wolfie’s show.”
When your administration is defined by failure, smear is the only thing the republican bumpkins and their lapdog pundits have left in their corner to work with. As the saying goes, "the best defense is a good offense".
These people have no soul.
You know what? I think that the right wing Neanderthals just don’t like the names of the children (Graeme and Gemma). Maybe that is why they have their panties in a knot.
habukkuk @ 4:
Agreed. This tactic only works so many times and the American people are just now reaching the point where they can see through this crap.
E> J. Dione has some good things to say as well;
So rather than just condemn the right-wingers as meanies, let's take their claims seriously. Doing so makes clear that they are engaged in a perverse and incoherent form of class warfare.
The left is accused of all manner of sins related to covetousness and envy whenever it raises questions about who benefits from Bush's tax cuts and mentions the yachts such folks might buy or the mansions they might own. But here is a family with modest possessions doing everything conservatives tell people they should do, and the right trashes them for getting help to buy health insurance for their children.
Most conservatives favor government-supported vouchers that would help Graeme attend his private school, but here they turn around and criticize him for . . . attending a private school. Federal money for private schools but not for health insurance? What's the logic here?
Conservatives endlessly praise risk-taking by entrepreneurs and would give big tax cuts to those who are most successful. But if a small-business person is struggling, he shouldn't even think about applying for SCHIP.
Conservatives who want to repeal the estate tax on large fortunes have cited stories -- most of them don't check out -- about farmers having to sell their farms to pay inheritance taxes. But the implication of these attacks on the Frosts is that they are expected to sell their investment property to pay for health care. Why?
Oh, yes, and conservatives tell us how much they love homeownership, and then assail the Frosts for having the nerve to own a home. I suppose they should have to sell that, too.
To bad he is a little late. I like E.J. though.
The radical right's virtual brownshirts get "better" at their jobs every day. Someday they'll be seen as what they are. Certainly, dirty-tricks---if you can call such foul tactics something as light as a "trick"---are nothing new in politics, but the modern incarnation of them seems to have gotten its start with Richard Nixon's campaigns---how apt was the acronym they chose, "CREEP". These right-wingnut virtual storm-troopers have a lot in common with their mother-of-all-foes, radical Islam: both indulge in self-pitying self-victimization and then chose to "fight back" by adopting tactics that makes a mockery of all of the principles that they claim to be fighting for (e.g., honor, decency, honesty, civility, etc.). This mentality is a larger version of the mind-set adopted by school-shooters just before they go down in flames. What a bunch of losers; if they weren't so dangerous they would be pathetic!
Anais @ 16:
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert (even though they are comedians) fortunately DO expose the real news and "turthiness". ;)
Were Malkin or Limberger left wingers, McConnell would be introducing a resolution in the Senate to condemn their attacks, the Clintons and Soros.
Wolf Blitzer would donate an hour of his afternoon show to the left's perfidy and Larry King would have the Frosts on to tell how badly they've been hurt.
But Limberger and Malkin are right wingnuts and McConnell is falling all over himself to say he said nothing, so Blitzer has to talk about Al Gore's evangelical detractors to appear "fair and balanced" and Larry King does another piece on Britney Spears.
Come on people. Imperator Bush and f*ckface Cheney have said they welcome debate on any topic. They or the GOP would never participate in character assassination of people with different views, would they?
Navy Vet @ 35:
as a former punk-goth, I resent that :P
Man, I'm so glad the the Times site went back to free. Krugman is one of the best, if not THE best. Although I'd like to give major props to Mr. Mark Shields, a man whom I wish this site and it's posters would give more credit, and pay more attention, to. Getting to see him destroy Kruathammer's idiotic points on Inside Washington is a true joy.
pissed off patricia @ 15:
Well, there was Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt; and Ike may not have been brilliant but he left us with a sadly prescient picture of how the Military Industrial Complex would change the U.S. from a Republic to an Empire.
But about Krugman: I think he epitomizes the whole sad and ugly situation thus: " . . .only a truly vicious political movement would respond by punishing . . . injured children." And no one -- no one -- can call herself (Malkin) or itself (Limbaugh) a Christian if they attack children. Jesus didn't say "Make the little children suffer," but that seems to be the message they want the world to hear.
xoites defends Constitution @ 22:
yep! yeecchhh!
Tim Ed Anshabby @ 47:
Where is that?
I thought this began as a way to avert attention from Mr. Bush, who after all slimed millions of kids like Graeme. It has spiraled out of control, exposing the raw, ignorant hatred of these ghouls. But let's not lose focus on who started this thing.
Bush did not smear this kid, but he cut off millions of others and their families from life-saving aid, at root to preserve a tax cut for the richest people in the land. It is hard to weigh which is more despicable.
Waddya bet if this kid handed out Christmas Candy Canes with religious messages on them in classroom, the reichwing will be saying no it was spontaneous; his church and parents didn't put him up to it, and we need a Children's Freedom of Religion act?
No children have opposed the Republican party and lived.
Side Show Bob
George Carlin said best: "They want live babies so they can grow up to be dead soldiers."
I agree with Super Karate Monkey Death Car @51.
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.
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(But mainly I just wanted to use "Super Karate Monkey Death Car" in a sentence.)
I hope you all realize that Krugman has awakened the ire of Loofah-guy, who will surely blast him the first chance he gets - maybe tonight if he is on.
hopefully this is the wake up we use to take our country back
BaScOmBe @ 50:
http://www.insidewashington.tv/
Shields isn't on every week, usually 2 out of 3. And Mr. Peterson is a great host.
I think Krugman's comment at the end is most important:
Why should a child have to win the good-parent lottery to get decent healthcare?
Joementum @ 55:
But did the little monkey die in the Death Car, and does he need medical attention?
Just when you think the reich-wingers can't go any lower - they manage to drain a little more out of the pool!
Silver Lining here is that with enough push - THE FACTS will make their rounds and all but the most heartless and savage on the right( I hope ) will be appalled at what conservatism has come to be under their current politicians and pundit/hacks. A
I'm looking forward to the day when a Michelle Malkin or Rush Limbaugh shows up at some innocent kid's family's home to smear his family and is greeted with a bullet through his or her slime-filled head.
...and that would be the excuse for chimpy to declare martial law
This happens all the time. the attack dogs of the right go for their throats.
Why? Why does this happen and why do we allow them to do it?
The right just used little girls in an ad for abstinence. That was fine. I heard no opposition from anyone.
The left uses a small boy to defend a program that should remain in place. this boy has personal experience with this matter.
The right go after him and his family, unmercilessly. How dare they.
How dare they ask the questions that they asked of that family.
This type of action from the right should have earned them some criticism from the media, but nothing came.
This is typical. The right feels that they are allowed to enter the personal realm of the citizens. Which is a big mistake that they make.
The right is full of hypocrites. They tell their followers to do as they say, but not to follow their actions.
And this I believe is wearing thin among the conservatives.
Many followers of the republican party are beginning to see through the thin veil worn by these charlatans.
The people do not like to be made fools. So the republicans better be aware of how shakey their ground really is.
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