Mark Steyn decides that dammit, nobody on the right is going to be nearly the asshole he is.
Sorry, no sale. The Democrats chose to outsource their airtime to a Seventh Grader. If a political party is desperate enough to send a boy to do a man's job, then the boy is fair game. As it is, the Dems do enough cynical and opportunist hiding behind biography and identity, and it's incredibly tedious. And anytime I send my seven-year-old out to argue policy you're welcome to clobber him, too. The alternative is a world in which genuine debate is ended and, as happened with Master Frost, politics dwindles down to professional staffers writing scripts to be mouthed by Equity moppets.
"Debate"? Steyn just linked to nonsensical freeper bullshit about the boy's family. And then we get this gem:
But one thing is clear by now: Whatever the truth about this boy's private school, his family home, his father's commercial property, etc, the Frosts are a very particular situation and do not illustrate any social generality - and certainly not one that makes the case for an expensive expansive all-but universal entitlement.
That "whatever the truth" bit is precious. The freeper post was a load of crap, obviously so. Steyn decided to publicize it without even bothering to even think about whether or not it made any sense. All the lunatics on the right blogosphere went bananas and many of them decided to pester the hell out of the family he'd mocked as liars.
And then it turns out that nothing he said or insinuated about them was true or relevant, and he shrugs and says "the kid was fair game, whatever."
What an incredible asshole.
All that shit about how the Democrats are hiding behind a kid who is now "fair game," and Steyn can't be roused to actually quote what the kid said and handle it: instead he attacks the kid's family. Mark Steyn, less mature than a middle schooler.
He never gets around to explaining why if their example is meaningless he thought it was so important or so much fun to talk crap about them in the first place. But he does claim that there are no poor people in western democracies like Canada. And then he pulls up an obituary of the young Frost's grandfather to prove that the kid isn't middle class at all, really, neatly contradicting himself, while arguing that it's just fantastic that the boy's parents had to borrow money from his grandparents because doing so is The American Dream. He winds up with standard issue guff about the "government teat" and how it would be "corrosive of liberty" if most Americans weren't living in constant abject fear about medical care, because, after all, terror shall set you free.
The actual healthcare issue is separate from the ethical one, where Steyn is fine with lying about a kid's family because it served his ideological ends. That issue I should hope is clear cut. But it is anyway "clear by now" that Steyn is not only unable to ethically participate in this debate, but that all he has to offer "intellectually" is paranoia and dishonesty. 'Cause what the Frosts' example really shows us is that we need to get rid of the estate tax! Wheeeeeee!
The American middle class knows that the American healthcare system is a disaster and deeply unfair. They're also beginning to cop on that having their healthcare paid for by the government is no more a threat to their liberty than are, say, child tax credits.
Steyn is swine, though Malkin is sicker. Or something like that.
UPDATE: Just for shits and giggles, for those who care about such things, the comments thread after this silly attempt at rightwing snark is comedy gold (not least in that it's been closed).
UPDATE 2: And... true fans of Steyn being exposed as a hypocrite of the zillonth degree could perhaps do worse for themselves by reading this TBogg comments thread. The things you can learn on the Internets, I'm tellin' ya...