January 1, 2014

If there's one thing you can say for Fox "news," it's that they're very good at building narratives and seeking out people who just happen to conveniently fit right into whichever right wing meme they're pushing for the day. Whether it's the union member who is happy to come on and attack unions, or the small business owner who attacks President Obama for their lack of hiring because of too many conveniently unnamed "regulations" that are supposedly destroying their business, to people like this woman named Kathy Chiero, who appeared on this Tuesday's Your World With Neil Cavuto.

Guest host Charles Payne opened up the segment by replaying a portion of Chiero's interview with Neil Cavuto last month, where she was attacking President Obama for the "you can keep your health care plan if you like it" statements that the right has been going ballistic over for the last few months. He brought Chiero back on for some follow up and apparently even though she got an extension for a year to keep her existing health insurance policy, she's still stark raving mad at the Obama administration over the health care law and the prospect of her premiums going up in a year.

What struck me about the interview was not so much that she was angry that her premiums might be going up. I have absolutely no idea if she's telling the truth here about her premiums, but there are people out there who are going to see premiums rise if they had inadequate plans that did not meat the minimum standards required under the ACA. I don't want to accuse anyone of lying about that unless I had all of their information available to verify and could prove they weren't telling the truth.

It was the vitriol directed at those who are going to be helped by the law and whether her income was going to be "redistributed" to someone who she feels hasn't made the "correct choices in life" or to people who don't work as hard as she feels she does for her money.

Anyone want to take a guess as to just who this self-proclaimed "good Christian" woman was talking about here?

PAYNE: Kathy, before you were going to lose your plan tomorrow. They've given you a one year extension, but that's not enough.

CHIERO: No sir. Charles, thank you for allowing me back on. I did get a one-year extension until December 1, 2014, where I can keep my current plan. I call it my green mile. Yes, I got an extension. Yes, I got a reprieve, but there's still a chair at the other end and that chair goes beyond the mid-term elections. But millions of us do not forget that the promise was broken, the lie was told, we cannot keep our plans, and I’m one of them.

PAYNE: And when that year is over, you will have to make a decision. You will not be keeping the same plan that you wanted to keep.

CHIERO: I... you know what? Nobody can tell me, Charles, what will happen. What I do believe will happen is that a new enhanced plan, according to the Obama Administration, will be forced upon me. I’m quite certain it will cost me more money and I'm quite certain that it will cover some child in Topeka with braces and glasses, but it won't help me and my family very much.

PAYNE: So yeah, let's talk about that, because the dynamics of your family go completely against what was being offered to you. In other words, the White House was saying more or less you had a junky plan. Why not get a plan that covers certain things? But at your age and the age of your kids, it doesn't make sense for you to even pay for them.

CHIERO: Well yeah. I'm grateful I'm at age fifty four, I’m covered for pregnancy, I’m grateful that I have no children under the age of twelve, but my nineteen, twenty two, and twenty three year-old are you know, covered for braces and glasses in some form.

So, no, Charles, and here is why I resented this. After I was on Neil’s show about a month ago, I was first of all very impressed by the reach of this program because I got colorful e-mails from all over the country, calling me names. Some I own, but some very unfair. And one of the names I got called in some form was that I was an elitist, that because I did not want to be, to part with my hard-earned money to pay for other people's health care.

And what I say is that in fact, who is elitist in this equation is a Washington lawmaker who had the unmitigated audacity, the arrogant hubris, to tell me that my plan was not good for me, when it was fine for me and my family, and now under penalty of law, the cost of my health care is doubling to cover other people. And in my mind that is nothing short of a redistribution of wealth. And of course...

PAYNE: Kathy, I want to do this though. Let’s take a pause for a moment because we did hear from Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. I want you to take a listen and get your opinion on this.

SEBELIUS: I’m thrilled that we're going to have millions of people for the first time that have health security, and it should be a great New Year for lots of families across America.

PAYNE: To your point, the White House is sort of pushing this, we're all in this together, a lot of people who never had health care, never had a dream of getting health care insurance, now they do and to the point to those people who sent you those colorful e-mails, obviously they're going to double down on this saying, well why not pay just a little bit extra so everybody in the country gets what you already are privileged to have, or were?

CHIERO: Well, you know what? And you said a word there, right there, Charles, that I want to touch on. I’m privileged. Am I privileged? I’m privileged to be an American, Charles. I’m privileged to live in this country. But I work damn hard. I work seven days a week to be privileged. I work when I don't want to work. I pay my bills responsibly. I sacrifice. I do not have life extravagances that would prevent me from buying health insurance.

That’s not privileged. That’s hard work, and I resent my hard work, my meager wealth, if you want to call that, being redistributed to people who maybe didn't make the life choices I did, and then to call that – of course they're thrilled – I would be thrilled if someone was paying for my health care. And it isn't a little bit more. Mine is $600 a month more. That’s not a little bit, Charles. That's somebody who is, who, like myself, whose going to have to figure out how to pay that. So, no, I don't blame those people for gloating. I would gloat, too, if somebody were paying for my health care.

PAYNE: You are a fantastic proponent of the other side of this argument. We appreciate you spending time with us.

For a little background on Chiero, here's her bio from her web site, The Sitting Room:

Kathy Chiero:

Host and Executive Producer

Kathy was raised with six brothers and sisters traveling all over the world as part of a military family. She has an extensive background in journalism, radio and television communications. She began writing for a local newspaper at age 17 and worked for almost 20 years for the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) in Virginia Beach, Virginia. While at The 700 Club Kathy served as a Senior Producer, News Anchor and Reporter, and occasional co-host of The 700 Club television show. Kathy is innately curious and finds everyone fascinating. She has often said that she could do a one hour show on any name she pulled from the phone book – because behind every person is a story…a gift… a purpose for which God created them. She left full-time television in 1996 to begin a career in real estate, building one of the top selling teams in Ohio . Today, she lives in Columbus, Ohio …but dreams of retiring within walking distance to an ocean.

Apparently she and her husband are doing pretty well since she had time to write about her kid complaining about not having a yard after they moved into a house with an inground 20 x 40 inground pool. Those lazy moochers who don't want to work out there and who are "gloating" about their free "Obamacare" goodies are cutting into that pool maintenance money, don't ya' know. Lord knows the end of the world is coming if she's forced to spend some more money because one of their kids needs braces.

She seems to have lost sight of what she wrote at the end of that post about the pool back in 2010, before "Obamacare" ruined her life and forced her to start auditioning for an anchor spot on Faux "news':

I often think of that when I pray for all the things I think I really want. I look at it two ways – one, the spoiled child who gets what others could only dream about …and it’s not enough. And from the perspective of the parent: I got what I thought I wanted but it comes with it’s own set of drawbacks and problems.

It teaches me to be grateful for what I have – maybe it’s not what I think I want this minute – but it’s what God has provided for me. And it keeps me from always wanting more – knowing that more “things” come with more problems, more responsibility, more maintenance. God knows what I need and what I can manage. God help me be at peace with those things.

I have no idea whether she's "at peace" with herself right now or not, but she's got that phony right wing victim card down pat to the point that Fox just loves her.

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