The Power of the Frosts

On the weekends, the President gives a radio address. Most people don't pay attention to it, since it happens every week, and is more like a scheduled press release than actual news. Still, the Democrats prepare a weekly address also, which is a chance for them to put out their press release. If they are lucky, there may be a sentence or two coverage of these addresses in the headline news until some actual news happens in the next cycle.

Recently, with the President's veto of the S-CHIP bill (funding state programs that buy health insurance for the working poor), the Democrats made that the subject of their weekend address. To give their message extra punch, they chose to have it delivered by a living example of the power of the program the President just vetoed. Graeme Frost, a 12 year old from Baltimore, was able to deliver the address because his life had literally been saved by health care he received through S-CHIP funding.

The Democrats don't usually have such skill with symbolism, but it was hard not to on this issue. Bush had to expect that if he vetoed the bill, there'd be a sick kid handy to point to. Still, in typical Democratic understatement, they put the kid on the radio for the weekend address almost no one listens to. Yeah, it got some coverage in the broader news, but not much.

Still, that was too much for the fanatical right-wing. The right-wing blogosphere and rant-mongers started a firestorm, which after several days is getting noticed in the mainstream press, like the New York Times:

In recent days, Graeme and his family have been attacked by conservative bloggers and other critics of the Democrats’ plan to expand the insurance program, known as S-chip. They scrutinized the family’s income and assets — even alleged the counters in their kitchen to be granite — and declared that the Frosts did not seem needy enough for government benefits.

and the Baltimore Sun:

The onslaught began over the weekend, a week after 12-year-old Graeme Frost delivered the Democrats' weekly radio address with a plea to Bush to sign the bill. A contributor to the conservative Web site Free Republic noted Graeme's enrollment in the private Park School and the sale of a smaller rowhouse on the Frosts' block for $485,000 this year and questioned whether the family should be taking advantage of the state program.

That post was picked up by the National Review Online and other Web sites. By Monday, Rush Limbaugh was discussing the family's earnings and assets on the air, and the blogger Michelle Malkin was writing about her visit to Halsey Frost's East Baltimore warehouse and her drive past the family's Butchers Hill rowhouse.

Michelle Malkin is no mere blogger, but perhaps the most widely read blogger on the right-wing side of the blogosphere. She appears frequently on FOX News, has guest-hosted for Bill O'Reilly, and has a syndicted newspaper column. She turned her focus on the Frosts, encouraging a flurry of blog commentary, much of it vicious, hateful and threatening to the Frost family. She went so far as to practice behavior she labels 'journalism' but which in some jurisdictions might be labelled 'stalking' the Frost family.

More from the Sun:

Bonnie Frost was driving children Zeke, Graeme and Gemma in Baltimore County in December 2004 when the family SUV hit a patch of black ice and slammed into a tree. Graeme sustained a brain stem injury; Gemma suffered a cranial fracture.

The family relied on SCHIP during the more than five months that the children were hospitalized. Graeme had to learn again to walk and talk, his parents say; he remains weak on his left side and speaks with a lisp. Gemma is blind in her left eye; she has difficulty with memory, learning and speech, and sees a behavioral psychologist to help her deal with her frustration.

"Her personality has changed," Bonnie Frost said yesterday. "She's not the same girl."

Bonnie and Gemma Frost joined Pelosi at the Capitol Hill news conference before the SCHIP vote. Then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid asked Graeme to record the radio address.

It was the news coverage of that broadcast that set off the blogo- sphere. A pseudonymous contributor to Free Republic cataloged the $20,000 cost of tuition at the Park School, the $160,000 Halsey Frost paid for his warehouse in 1999 and the $485,000 for which a neighbor sold his home in March. Links were provided to photos of the Park School's 44,000-square- foot Wyman Arts Center and the Frosts' 1992 wedding announcement in The New York Times.

Soon strangers were posting accusatory messages describing Halsey Frost as a business owner who lived on a street of half-million-dollar homes, worked out of his own commercial property and paid to send his children to private school, yet still took advantage of government-funded health care.

"Bad things happen to good people, and they cause financial problems and tough choices," Mark Steyn wrote on the National Review Online. "But, if this is the face of the 'needy' in America, then no-one is not needy."

The Redstate contributor was less civil.

"Hang 'em. Publically," the contributor wrote. "Let 'em twist in the wind and be eaten by ravens. Then maybe the bunch of socialist patsies will think twice."

It's not like Malkin, Limbaugh and their followers haven't smeared people before, and often used hateful, violent speech against those they want to intimidate. But this time there was something particularly creepy about it.

People were using the Internet to turn up random "facts" about the family, which were often incorrect, and then these were getting passed along and reinforced with other bits of data gathered elsewhere. A communal feeding frenzy erupted, dedicated to tearing at the Frost family, questioning their legitimacy and threatening their lives.

Expensive private school! Fancy home! His own business! Charges and "research" flew far and wide. As the saying goes, lies travelled half-way round the world before truth was done getting its pants on. The truth?

The Frosts say the description of their family's circumstances now circulating is misleading. Halsey, they say, is a self-employed woodworker - he has no employees - while Bonnie works part time for a medical publishing firm. Together, they say, they earn between $45,000 and $50,000 a year.

That would make the Frosts eligible for Maryland's Children's Health Program, which is open to families that earn no more than 300 percent of the federal poverty level, or $82,830 a year for a family of six.

The Frosts declined to show The Sun their 2006 income tax returns, and the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene would not confirm their enrollment in the program. But John G. Folkemer, the deputy secretary for health care financing, said yesterday that applicants must prove their income levels through Social Security numbers or tax returns to be accepted for coverage.

Folkemer said a family's assets are not considered in determining eligibility. Halsey Frost purchased the family home for $55,000 in 1990, according to city records, and refinanced in 2005, he says, to make improvements to accommodate the return of Graeme and Gemma from the hospital. The 1936 brick rowhouse, on a side street near Patterson Park, has an assessed value of $263,140.

Halsey Frost purchased a 1920 warehouse in East Baltimore for $160,000 in 1999, according to city records. It is assessed at $160,500. Frost says he is still paying off the mortgages on both properties.

The four Frost children depend on financial aid to attend private school, the Frosts say. In addition, they say, Gemma receives money from the city for special education made necessary by her injuries.

Halsey and Bonnie Frost say they still have no health insurance. Bonnie Frost said she priced coverage recently at $1,200 a month.

It's bad enough when this is done to a presidential candidate, or a soldier in Iraq who dares to suggest all is not rosy, but to see it being done to an injured little boy and his brain-injured sister was even more stomach-turning. And it seemed to this observer, having seen these hate storms come and go in the past, that there was something extra hateful about this one.

Sure, it had familiar elements. Poorly done research, posted and then repeated as gospel far and wide without question. Outright lies and distortions to season the mix. Self-righteous intrusions into privacy under the guise of 'journalism', in search only of 'facts' that support the pre-determined attack. A chorus of angry ideologues whipping themselves up, focussed and egged on by celebrity cheer leaders who simultaneously add pseudo-credibility and more fuel for the fire. We've seen this right-wing echo chamber version of Orwell's Two Minute Hate before.

But why this poor kid and his family? What did they do to deserve it? It's not like S-CHIP is a major part of the GOP platform - I bet a number of the angry mob didn't even know what the letters stood for a month ago. Why does this one family in Baltimore, that most of the country is barely aware of, engender a full frontal assault from Malkin, the National Review and Rush? Why do they inspire such a high degree of truly disgusting comment, such hatred, and such threats?

I believe that power of the Frosts, which is why the Malikiniks must crush them, is that they are the Republican archetype of the common man. If THEY need government programs to get by, then the whole right-wing mythos is in question.

He is a craftsman, he works with his hands making things. He's not a rich stockbroker or an effete intellectual. He tried to get ahead by starting his own small business. He had a big family, and drove an SUV. He isn't some urban Double-Income No Kids type in a Prius. His wife has a part-time job.

But still, they have a hard time making ends meet, and when that 'safe' SUV slid on a patch of ice and wrapped itself around a tree, they had two kids with brain damage and a life of hospitals, special ed, and bills.

Uh-oh. Maybe we DO need government. Maybe deserving people who do the Right Things need help. Maybe America isn't working so well after all. Maybe ... it could happen to ME!

The Frosts were trying to lead the life of industry, entrepreneurship and family that, in the Republican mythos, we should all aspire to. And a tragic accident pulled the rug out from under, and had it not been for the program that the President just vetoed, all would have been lost.

No wonder they rush to prove that the Frosts are a fraud, that their story is a lie, that their son's story can't be true. Because, if it IS true, it's too powerful, and it means they are wrong, and about a lot more than S-CHIP.

Perhaps some of the anger and hatred being directed at the Frosts is the pent-up anger they've been feeling because some small part of them has known the truth of that message for some time. Perhaps the anger in the comments insulting Halsey Frost for not having gotten insurance is because on some level they realize that, in order to continue to defend the President, they are saying that this archetypical Republican 'regular guy' ought to have gotten a job in a corporate cubicle. And if Halsey Frost 'ought' to have a cubicle job, putting up with a petty tyrant boss and depending on the whims of the next corporate re-org lottery for a future, then maybe there is no escape for them, in their own increasingly insecure corporate job. Maybe they are trapped by corporate masters who have gamed the system and screwed the common man, as they've kinda been suspecting all along.

Not that these thoughts would be conscious, or anything more than inchoate, raw emotive power, easily directed into the Two Minute Hate by Leader Malkin or Limbaugh. Hide from this truth! Deny the power of the story! Find a way, any way, to continue to believe that in America a fella who works hard will undoubtedly get ahead, and provide for his family without the need for a Government that merely takes his tax dollars like a thief. Hate the enemy whose existence proves otherwise!

Destroy the Power of the Frosts.

Update: From Colin McEnroe:

It would be a mistake to get caught up inthe No Child Left Unsmeared aspect, because it conceals a much more important, substantive issue. If you boil away all the vitriol, what you're left with is a conservative argument that goes like this:

These people -- even with their combined income of a VERY modest $45,000 -- have no business turning to the government for help with their medical bills because they haven't been bankrupted yet. They're income is low, but they've managed to hang onto some assets that place them a little closer to the middle class. It's disgusting that they get help from the government if they have anything.

The opposing argument is that middle class existence of this sort is incredibly fragile. We ought to have a system in which families get help before they have lost everything they worked for.

In this regard -- especially the way they seem to have one foot in the working poor and the other in the middle class -- the Frosts are such a perfect battleground for this debate that I kind of pity them. Little Graeme will be lucky if he doesn't become the Lance Loud of health care.

If the Democrats were smart, they'd keep this conversation going, because the Frosts seem to be exactly whom we should be talking about. They're trying to make it as a middle class family, without a lot of income. And they're just about succeeding, as long Malkin and her friends don't insist that they be bankrupted or stripped of their hard-won assets by their medical bills.

Medical bills are the number one cause of bankruptcy in this nation. When people are telling you how much better our system is than those of Germany, France, Australia, Canada, be sure to point that out. In our system, you could lose your job tomorrow, lose your health insurance in the same gulp and immediately become one bad illness or accident away from bankruptcy (although, in fact, our system regularly bankrupts even the people who think they do have coverage, as the Harvard Study illustrates).

And look at this! Malkin and her friends don't want to fix that problem. On the contrary, they insist on it! They insist on the risk of bankruptcy as kind of a moral imperative; and they say members of the shaky, eroding American middle class who are not willing to put up with the ruination of their financial health from medical bills are leeches and wussies! Wow.