Reich Wing goes after an even younger SCHIP kid.....

[marmar]

from ThinkProgress:


Right Wing Gleefully Smears Two Yr-Old SCHIP Recipient Bethany Wilkerson


Yesterday, TrueMajorityAction released an ad of 2-year old Bethany Wilkerson, who was born with a serious heart problem and received health insurance through the SCHIP program. Today, the Wilkerson family will appear with lawmakers on Capitol Hill to rally support for increased funding of the SCHIP program.

Like the Frost family, the Wilkerson family has already become the subject of right-wing attacks. Michelle Malkin — whose baseless smear campaign against 12-year old Graeme Frost was deemed too bogus for even Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) — is now trying to rally the right against Bethany.

Heralding the arrival of a “new toddler-aged human shield,” Malkin writes that “the Wilkersons made a choice” — a seeming reference to the fact that Malkin now believes she has the license to attack the Wilkersons for their public support of SCHIP. “We need more ‘partisan bickering,’ not less,” added Malkin.

Malkin’s not alone in her rage. In a piece entitled “Meet the New Frosts, Same As the Old Frosts,” the National Review’s Mark Hemingway attacks the Wilkersons as irresponsible parents:


While the debate around the Frost family at least initially centered around their relative wealth, the issue really at hand is one of bad behavior.

For Dara and Brian Wilkerson, the fact that they don’t have health insurance is less about falling through the cracks than the decisions they’ve made.


Hemingway claims that Bethany’s mother, Dara, “voluntarily left a job at a country club that had good health insurance, because the situation was ‘unmanageable,’” to “take a job at a restaurant with no health insurance.” He mourns the fact that the Wilkersons “went on to have a baby anyway.”

Dara Wilkerson released this statement responding to the attacks on her choice of employment:


We have seen the statement about my previous employment and here is what we have to say: I left my previous place of employment years before Bethany became part of our lives. I am a hard working woman. I have worked at Snappers Sea Grill for over 6 years. It is a good work environment and I am a loyal employee. My husband and I were blessed with Bethany two years ago and we are even more blessed to still have her with us today.


So according to this “pro-life” right-wing logic, the Wilkersons should have sacrificed having a daughter in order to stay in an “unmanageable” job.

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/10/16/bethany-attacks/

[Yael]

1. No, not sacrificed having their daughter -- they are the pro-life party, remember?

If the thought of sacrificing her because they made poor decisions lead them to terminate, then they belong in jail.

<~~ thinks she has all of the talking points covered

:freak:

[angstlessk]

2. If your boss rapes you the first question you must ask..does he offer health insurance!

if the answer is no...quit your job...if the answer is yes..suck it up ... lay back and enjoy it...part of the 'VALUES AGENDA' ACCORDING TO REPUGLICANS

[Cleita]

3. Tragic that all those two year olds made the wrong life choices

and didn't save their money for emergency medical care from their salaries. Too bad for them. They deserve what they get.

:sarcasm:

[Gormy Cuss]

12. Exactly.

They're just like all those slacker kids on TANF.


edited to add :sarcasm:

[RamboLiberal]

4. I posted the National Review article attacking this family earlier

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=2059505&mesg_id=2059505

[Ian David]

5. If she were a "Snowflake Baby" it would be different, right? n/t

[Arkansas Granny]

6. It sounds as though the right wing wants to apply means testing

before you are allowed to reproduce. How does that fit into their pro-life agenda? If you get pregnant without health insurance do you have to give the baby up for adoption to a "proper" family?

[DemBones DemBones]

7. Some right wingers are just cruel nutcases who

lie about being pro-life. Anyone who complains about a child receiving needed medical care is not pro-life. Life does not end at birth and some parents find themselves saddled with medical bills they can't afford.

Besides, I doubt they know whether the couple decided to have a child or the pregnancy was a surprise. Either way, would they have wanted her to abort? It sure sounds that way, which means they are not really pro-life.

One look at some of their evil faces tells you they're not pro-life, only pro-hate.

[meow2u3]

8. Conserviatives totally without conscience

These lowlife cretins are nothing but a bunch of child abusers--smearing a 2-year-old?! How low can one go?

[Misc]

9. What?!?

When does anyone say they "should have sacrificed having a daughter in order to stay in an 'unmanageable job.'?"
What is being said is that they should have considered their financial situation and the fact that they had no insurance before they had children. (They did make the choice to try for children.)
I don't see how this is "smearing" the child. No one says anything bad about the child at all.
It make a powerful and emotional statement to say the right is "smearing children" but it is also a lie.

[marmar]

10. Sure, whatever.....

Enjoying your day out at DU?

[Swede]

11. Wow,11 post in and you're defending Rush and Malkin.

Obvious much?

[Contrary1]

14. Every one of his posts is defending the Repub party...

So much for transparency.

[Zavulon]

13. Pass the butter.

:popcorn:

[Misc]

15. So much for open discussion

I don't understand this site.
From what I have seen, nobody has any interest in hearing anything that doesn't support what they already believe. And I'm not just talking about Left vs. Right. If someone objects to the post of another, the rebuttal almost always seems to be one of anger, name-calling, etc.
Nobody who responded to my post did anything but mock me. Not one person offered any evidence as to how the "smearing" was directed at the child.
And what does the number of posts have to do with anything. You don't welcome newcomers? I came here to get another perspective. I thought perhaps I could learn from the discussions on this site. Perhaps I was wrong.

[Contrary1]

16. Bottom line:

The home address should never have been made public. If it was not done to incite, then what was the purpose? Malkin and other right-wingers show up at their front door with the signs and insults.

This is attacking everyone that lives there, which includes the children. The same point could have been made without posting the address.

I suppose "icwhatudo" didn't consider that it might end up this way?

[Iris]

27. suggesting the child should never have been born is enough.

And if you don't understand this site, why are you posting on it? Maybe you should spend some time reading some of the threads here to get a general idea of what this place is all about.

[Swede]

17. How's this?

"Let 'em twist in the wind and be eaten by ravens," wrote one one on Redstate.com, who was quoted in the Baltimore Sun. "Then maybe the bunch of socialist patsies will think twice."


http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1670210,00.html

[Misc]

19. Wow, that's really awful...

But that seems to pretty isolated. I've never heard anyone say anything like that and I hardly think it's the norm.

[bobbolink]

29. Well, then, hold on to your hat, because that's TAME for these ......(fill in the blank)

Right here on DU, they went after a dying man, and hastened his death.

Yeah, they're real sweeties.

:crazy:

[colinmom71]

18. Umm, nowhere in the article does it verify the claim the Wilkerson's...

Were trying to conceive when Bethany came along. This is merely supposition on the part of Hemingway's column cited in this article. Unless you and Hemingway personally know the Wilkerson's and knows from the personal relationship that they were actively trying to conceive a child, neither he nor you should be indulging in affirming this supposition as fact. The smear here is against the parents, supposing that they purposely conceived a daughter with a foreseeable heart defect and therefore deserve to be attacked by people who do not at all know their personal story for sharing their experience to the nation and our Congress to advocate for expanding SCHIP programs.

[Misc]

20. My understanding,

from what I have read on this, was that the parents themselves said that. You are correct, I don't know that for a fact. But then how much can anyone really know for a fact based on what they read in the news? You are also correct in saying that the parents are the focus, not the child. However, I have never heard anyone claim that they "purposely conceived a daughter with a foreseeable heart defect."

I don't understand why they are using as case studies two families who are covered under the current SCHIP program. Wouldn't it be more effective to show an example of a family who needs help but doesn't qualify under current SCHIP?

[colinmom71]

21. Ack! I knew I was wording that clumsily....

Sorry, I should clarify what I meant there. That's what I get for trying to make a response post too quickly while waiting for the kid's school bus to get here...

I was addressing the notion that they purposely conceived their baby, which has not been evidenced at least in this article. Sorry, but I haven't read anything else on this family beyond this article so I don't know anything about them. But I do believe that Hemingway was overreaching by claiming this as fact and then attacking them based on his own supposition.

I also meant to say that the implication of Hemingway's cited article here seems to strongly imply that the parents should have somehow foresaw that their child could be born with a heart defect and thus need health coverage for her necessary care. Well, while it's true that anyone's child can be born with health issues, the facts are there aren't that many people who have the resources to completely prepare financially for the chance of having an ill child. Attacking the Wilkerson's decisions before and during the pregnancy is simply disingenuous. Otherwise, everyone who never fully planned for the contingency of their baby being born ill would need to be attacked as well. And that's going to be a whole lot of working and middle class families...

Heck, I had some similar problems during my unplanned pregnancy with my son. We made plans to move to the Atlanta area and get a job transfer for my husband so I could be home with the baby his first year or so. Well, those plans crashed and burned in spectacular fashion when our son was born 16 weeks prematurely, on the day my husband received two job offers to work towards our plans. It would be four years before those plans began to become a reality due to my son's health needs as a baby. Thank goodness for GA's pre-natal Medicaid program because it covered all our medical expenses for both myself and our son. The Wilkerson's also likely did the best they could for their daughter with the resources they had and SCHIP helped that.

As for your question about trying to find other families who need help but do not qualify under current SCHIP, that may indeed also be a good tactic to illustrate why SCHIP needs to be expanded. But I have to admit, when we were "in the trenches" with Colin's hospital care and rehabilitative care afterwards, there wasn't much spare time we could spend away from caring for his needs. It's emotionally, mentally, and financially draining being the full time caregiver for a severely ill child. I'd imagine it might be difficult to find a family in such a dilemma who can spare time and money to be politically active and share their needs with the world. It's likely easier to find families for whom the crisis days are past and are thus willing to spare time to speak out about how SCHIP was such a helpful resource for their family.

Socially progressive policies are supposed to help empower families to make the best decisions they can to fulfill their particular family dynamic's needs. Expanding SCHIP will only help strengthen that position, by giving middle class parents the reassurance that they can afford health insurance for their kids should a job loss, job transfer, or some other set back hit the family and make accessing health insurance otherwise prohibitive.

[Misc]

25. Thank you

I am glad that your son is thriving and that your family is (I assume) doing well. I know illness of a child can be very difficult and a lot of families don't make it through such hard times.

Thank you for your well-written, clearly thought-out, intelligent response. I have been met with a lot of scorn and dismissal on this site, but responses like yours are what I was hoping for... a chance to learn and hear more opinions on issues. You have truly given me real information to think about.

[Mad_Dem_X]

23. Welcome to DU.

Enjoy your stay.

[Mad_Dem_X]

22. The RW has no f*cking shame

And no sense of DECENCY or HUMANITY. I wonder what it's like to walk around with no conscience and no compassion for your fellow human beings.

[OHdem10]

24. Personal Responsibilty Personal Responsibility

Sarcasm"

[Javaman]

26. The Dems should bring out a fetus...

that way, if the repukes attack they will be going after their unborn base.

there is no end to the amazement to how low these scumbag repukes will go.

[bobbolink]

28. And, Bethany's mother voted for these ogres.

So, she also needs to do some soul-searching for her own part in this battle.