Attacking the Anecdote

The other day Michael Ledeen cited the Rush Limbaugh "phony soldiers" flap as "illustrat[ing] one of the central features of contemporary politics: the Left's loss of intellectual coherence and confidence, and its consequent turn to the vilification of individuals."

Yes, it's "the Left" that has turned to the vilification of individuals. See, for example, this story from Think Progress:

Two weeks ago, the Democratic radio address was delivered by a 12-year old Maryland boy named Graeme Frost. Graeme told his story of being involved in a severe car accident three years ago, and having received access to medical care because of the Children’s Health Insurance Program. . . .

The right-wing immediately condemned Democrats for daring to put a human face on the SCHIP program at a time when Bush was proposing a “diminishment of the number of children covered.” Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) — who has posed with children to advance his own political agenda — claimed Graeme was being used “as a human shield.”

Conservatives have more recently turned their targets on young Graeme Frost himself. A poster at the Free Republic propagated information alleging that Frost was actually a rich kid being pampered by the government. Among other bits of information, the post by the Freeper “icwhatudo” asserts that Graeme and his sister Gemma attend wealthy schools that cost “nearly $40,000 per year for tuition” and live in a well-off home.

The smear attack against Graeme has taken firm hold in the right-wing blogosphere. The National Review, Michelle Malkin, Wizbang, Powerline, and the Weekly Standard blog have all launched assaults on the Frost family. The story is slowly working its way into traditional media outlets as well.

Here are the facts that the right-wing distorted in order to attack young Graeme:

1) Graeme has a scholarship to a private school. The school costs $15K a year, but the family only pays $500 a year.

2) His sister Gemma attends another private school to help her with the brain injuries that occurred due to her accident. The school costs $23,000 a year, but the state pays the entire cost.

3) They bought their “lavish house” sixteen years ago for $55,000 at a time when the neighborhood was less than safe.

4) Last year, the Frost’s made $45,000 combined. Over the past few years they have made no more than $50,000 combined.

5) The state of Maryland has found them eligible to participate in the CHIP program.
Desperate to defend Bush’s decision to cut off millions of children from health care, the right wing has stooped to launching baseless and uninformed attacks against a 12 year old child and his family.

Right wing bloggers have been harassing the Frosts, calling their home numerous times to get information about their private lives. Compassionate conservatism indeed.

Apparently Michelle Malkin is even stalking the Frosts personally, visiting their home, interviewing their neighbors, etc. Real classy.

I think Digby pretty much sums up my gut reaction to this:

This is so loathsome I am literally sick to my stomach. These kids were hurt in a car accident. Their parents could not afford health insurance --- and sure as hell couldn't get it now with a severely handicapped daughter. And these shrieking wingnut jackasses are harassing their family for publicly supporting the program that allowed the kids to get health care. A program, by the way, which a large number of these Republicans support as well.

They went after Michael J. Fox. They went after a wounded Iraq war veteran. Now they are going after handicapped kids. There is obviously no limit to how low these people will go.

To be fair, I suspect that most of the wingers who are going after the Frosts don't know their daughter suffered significant brain injuries from the accident or that Graeme attends school on a scholarship or that the family bought its home for only $55,000. They were told one set of facts by an anonymous commenter at a fringe website and that was good enough for them. Call it reckless indifference to the truth.

Nevertheless, Digby's comparison is instructive. Implicit in the attacks on the Frosts and Michael J. Fox and certain anti-war veterans (and countless other examples) is the notion that if you can someone manage to discredit a spokesperson for a particular policy, then somehow the policy itself will be discredited. That's a really bizarre way of viewing the world, if you think about it. I mean, if Michael J. Fox had been exaggerating his Parkinson's symptoms, as Rush Limbaugh suggested, would that have had any bearing whatsoever on the empirical data suggesting that stem cell research can help lead to treatments for Parkinson's disease? And if it turned out that the Frosts were indeed capable of paying for private health insurance, would that change the undisputed fact that there are thousands of families out there who could not afford health care without S-CHIP? Of course not.

In fact, these people attack the anecdote precisely because they can't attack the data. After all, what's easier: defending a policy that will indisputably result in thousands of children losing their health care coverage or suggesting (without any evidence) that one particular family could afford private insurance? And what's easier: defending the President's policies in Iraq or attacking the credibility of a few isolated critics of the war?

The common denominator in all of these cases is a desire to avoid a policy debate in which the right wing position is unpopular and difficult to defend substantively.

That and utter shamelessness.