The Frost Family Mini-Smear

RUSH: Now, ladies and gentlemen, as you know, your host is in the process of another mini-smear, and that mini-smear is taking place out on the left-wing blogosphere, and it is centered around the false allegation that I ‘attacked’ a 12-year-old kid, Graeme Frost — of the famous Frost family, of the famous response of Graeme Frost to President Bush’s radio address, in trying to sell a bogus, lying, distorted version of the expansion of the S-CHIP program. Well, we’re hoping Pelosi will send a letter on this, but she’s in deep doo-doo with her own people. I think she’s worried about salvaging herself leadership-wise before dealing with me. But now get this. This is from the Washington Post today: ‘A Maryland family caught in the partisan crossfire over a children’s health-care bill in Congress is now stepping back into the divisive debate, advocating this time for state legislation that would expand coverage for adults.’ Oh, I get it. Up until now, the Frost family was just an innocent bunch of victims of an unfair and unjust US health care system, and President Bush was the evil Darth Vader trying to prevent them and their kids and others like them from having adequate health care.

That was the lie. The Frost family was covered under the current structure of the S-CHIP program. Now we find out that the mother of Graeme Frost has become an activist, and is advocating for state legislation that would expand coverage for adults. Thank you, Mrs. Frost! Then everybody would be covered. The whole family could be covered. We have SA-CHIP. We have S-CHIP. We’d have everything covered in the Frost family. Frost family can then save up their money. They won’t have to spend on health care. By the way, folks, about these dishwashers and these tenement dwellers and so forth in Chinatown, $1,000, $2,000 donation to Hillary Clinton? They can’t afford health care, but they can afford a grand or two grand to give to her presidential campaign? (interruption) Yeah, right. Well, that’s right. That’s another thing. Here’s another ‘family caught in the partisan crossfire.’ They weren’t ‘caught’ in anything! They entered it. They showed up in it. This story indicates that we were right all along about it: This is an activist family. They were found by some child services outfit in Maryland and then supposedly (this is how the story goes) the Democrats in Washington were told about this family by the child services bunch in Maryland. It’s like the grandparents driving around Florida happened to listen in to Newt’s conversation on a cell phone in a car, like we all do.

‘Three weeks ago, after 12-year-old Graeme Frost offered a radio appeal for expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), his family became fodder for conservative bloggers. The Frosts were derided as freeloaders who relied on government insurance for their children while they sent two to private school. Bloggers staked out their Baltimore rowhouse, declaring it too fancy for a family that can’t afford to pay for health insurance. Commentator Rush Limbaugh imitated…’ Oh! Ohhhh. I didn’t read this far in the story. ‘Commentator Rush Limbaugh imitated Graeme Frost’s voice, damaged in a car accident, and said congressional Democrats were using the boy to ‘advance a distortion.” I wasn’t ‘imitating his voice.’ I’ve never heard his voice. I used my classic little kid voice. See? You’ve got people… This is Media Matters. This is Media Matters, again. They don’t listen to the program, so they don’t know the context. (classic little kid voice) ‘They don’t know I have a little 12-year-old voice, a little kid voice that I use. I’ve been doing for 18 years,’ even longer than that. So now I’m ‘imitating’ the kid’s voice when I wasn’t, just like I was not ‘making fun’ of Michael J. Fox and his Parkinson’s Disease.

Anyway, ‘Democrats rushed to the boy’s defense, accusing conservatives of distorting the family’s finances and attacking Graeme unfairly,’ and then we had the Doonesbury cartoon yesterday. But now we find out that Mrs. Frost wants to expand state health care for adults. ‘She said she didn’t hesitate to join the Maryland effort, despite the events of the past three weeks. ‘I’m not going to let the nasty bloggers scare me away from standing up for what’s important,’ she said yesterday.’ Well, hubba hubba. So if anything, this is vindication. However, it’s not just about vindication, folks. It is the fact that this bunch is actually interested in the expansion of government to fund everybody’s health care, when you start talking about adults being included. They’re Democrat pawns, and I think they like the attention. I don’t know what their activist status was prior to all this. But they clearly like this attention now. A lot of people do. Everybody gets their 15 minutes of fame. Everybody wants that. Now they’re stars, even though they’re in the middle of a controversy. The Drive-By Media is defending ’em so their virtue is intact as far as they’re concerned. ‘So go for it! Let’s get even more involved,’ and that’s the thinking behind this.