Right Wing Gleefully Smears Two Year-Old SCHIP Recipient

Posted by Faiz Shakir at 4:45 AM on October 17, 2007.

This post, written by Faiz Shakir, originally appeared on Think Progress

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.

Tagged as: media, children, conservatives, health care, malkin, s-chip, frost, bethany wilkerson

Faiz Shakir is the Research Director at the Center for American Progress and serves as Editor of ThinkProgress.org and The Progress Report.