How low can they go? R/W Gleefully Smears Two Yr-Old SCHIP Recipient Bethany Wilkerson

[babylonsister]

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


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.

[movonne]

1. These people must be born with a genetic failure....

[neverforget]

5. They got the dollar gene instead of the humanity gene. Malkin and her ilk

are wastes of carbon. Only money matters to them.:puke:

[Bitwit1234]

2. We all know there is something sick about these people

We should go to church on Sunday and pray that the real God show them the evil of their ways. And ask God to please follow the old adage "What goes around comes around", especially to these evil monsters.

[bdamomma]

3. it's terrible how they continue to smear people regarding the SCHIP Bill.

there is no reason for this smearing, these RW'ers are full of venom.

[AnneD]

18. There is a reason for smearing these SChip children...

by putting on a human face to the 'problem'-you expose their lies. And that is what they fear the most. This child is not in some 3rd world country, or the 12th child of a welfare queen. She is a child, like your child, or grandchild, or niece, or your child's playmate. She is innocent and has done nothing wrong other that have a health problem. If they can reduce this problem to just numbers-they know they can win because people don't get upset about numbers. But people do get upset about sick children that can't get needed health care in this country.

This is the same thing that they do will soldiers. No one cares much about the numbers. But let a soldier come back and tell the truth and demand answers....he is vilified as a phony soldier. Because people will listen to a soldier-or a parent that has lost a child. But numbers....no one really cares about number do they?

[northzax]

4. Well it's obvious, ain't it?

If she couldn't give her kid health insurance, she should have had an abortion...no wait...used birth control...fuck, can't do that...i mean never had sex with her husband, the dirty little slut! No wait, hubby probably wanted sex, and the dutiful wife must give it...i got nothing.

[sonias]

24. It's pointless

They really have no logic to their madness. But good try though. :rofl:

I still think the only thing that fits is that they love the fetus but hate the child. It's a horrible moral stance but it's the only thing that fits.

That child is adorable and the wingnuts like Malkin can't have it come down to a beautiful cherub looking child. They must demonize her poor parents. How dare they have a child they could not afford to provide exorbitantly priced medical care for!

Sonia

[northzax]

25. Well that's the thing I don't hear from anyone

Why can't they find a child who would be, or has been, hurt by CHIP to make the case? Oh, they can't? Huh. Well then attack ATTACK!!!

[Der Blaue Engel]

6. If there's a hell, there's a special place in it for Malkin

:puke:

"The Wilkersons made a choice" comment is outrageous for so many reasons, not least of which is the use of the word "choice," invoking a woman's right to choose and then blasting a woman for choosing to have a child. Unfuckingbelievable.

[bbgrunt]

7. okay--next step is to see how

they will attack a fetus saved by schips. Obviously, what they are doing is blaming the poor and unfortunate for their own problems as a way to deny any human empathy.

[BOSSHOG]

8. Obviously the Wilkerson bitch should have had an abortion

or just let her daughter die. Hey that's what conservative values are all about. Pardon me, I meant to say "christian conservative values."

[Quantess]

11. What is this 180 about? Now they suggest that the girl should not have been born?

But otherwise, these same people are anti-choice, depending on the conversation.
This screams that anti-choicers really DO NOT care about fetuses, or children, at all! Rather, they view pregnancy as punishment.

[Cathyclysmic]

9. Michelle Malkin can DIAF, and quick.

[Quantess]

10. She's out of the womb, so she's fair game.

Hey wait a minute....'He mourns the fact that the Wilkersons “went on to have a baby anyway.”'

What's going on, here? Can't they be consistent? Now the Right is suddenly pro-choice?!
Flip-floppers!

[Canuckistanian]

12. Tom Tomorrow predicted this

[sharp_stick]

13. I swear

if I ever meet any of these dirt bags I will spit in their goddamned faces. I hate these fucking rw assholes.

[renate]

14. it's too bad there's no SCHIP program for RWers without souls

I say let them keep on talking. They certainly can't be impressing anybody but the folks who are already in the echo chamber with them. Decent humans are repulsed by their tactics.

[nickgutierrez]

15. I'll never understand the depths of right-wing hate.

These are people that quite literally think the government is - and should be - designed to do terrible things to people far, far away, and has no business trying to help people that need it.

I just don't get it.

[lateo]

16. There is no limit to how low they will go.

We should stop being surprised.

[Quantess]

17. K & R.

[jgraz]

19. Here's hoping this is their McCarthy moment

"Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

But somehow, I doubt it. The people who still support these monsters have serious brain damage from the environment they've been raised in. This is not just some random insult; I honestly think that many Rethugs have had the chemical makeup of their brains damaged from continual greed and nastiness -- analogous to how people with PTSD experience physical changes in their brains.

At some point, we're either going to have to medicate these folks, or segregate them from the rest of normal, healthy society.

[imtheglue]

20. Man, I'm getting discouraged

I just got done watching Countdown. The past week, I have gone from feeling superior to all the wingnuts out there to just being bummed. Are there really people out there that want children to die because of partisan politics. Is this really what it has come to. We are a country that allows a member of a Senator's staff to release a plethera of lies about a family that has been through a horrible trama, and to include thier ADDRESS so that the neo-con nutjobs can torment them, or worse. I don't get it. I am sitting here shaking my head but I feel like crying. Mr. Bush has turned out to be one hell of a uniter....

[Quantess]

21. I feel the same way, almost every day.

:hi: Welcome to DU!

[imtheglue]

22. Thanks

Thank. I,m on the site almost everyday. I just have never been much of a poster. I am just so fed up, I thought I my head was going to explode. I just can't believe how bad it has gotten. How can the neo-con still be following this administration.

[Missy Vixen]

23. Welcome to DU, imtheglue

I could not agree with you more -- these people have reached a level it's taken them years to attain. Smearing a two-year-old?

They have no souls. They have no humanity. They are overdrawn at the Karma bank, and their overdraft protection is gone as well.

Julie

[NewJeffCT]

27. welcome to DU

feel free to stick around for a while.

[Vinca]

26. It's time to pull the plug on the freezer holding the snowflake babies.

Since healthcare costs have risen dramatically during their storage, I'm sure many families won't be able to afford them.