By now the fabled Priorities USA PAC ad "Mitt Killed My Wife" is entering the annals of not just below-the-belt politics, but stupid below-the-belt politics.
The way that the ad told the story, poor Joe Soptic was laid off from his steel-plant job and the next thing we know his wife is dying of cancer because he couldn't afford health insurance.
Only now we are getting the details. At the time that Soptic was laid off in 2001 (two years after Mitt left Bain, and after he refused a buy-out) his wife was working and had health insurance.
But in 2002 or 2003 she had to quit her job with a rotator cuff injury. Then she went on disability, it appears.
But wait! If you are on Social Security Disability you can get on Medicare after 24 months, even if you aren't yet 65. Mrs. Soptic, it appears, finally went to the hospital in 2006 with pneumonia and tragically died. But that is at least three years after her accident.
Something doesn't add up. Not if the Soptic family was really concerned about making sure that its members were protected with health insurance.
The new digital media age has changed the rules for the old helpless-victim sob story. It used to be that the mainstream media would roll out the sob story and would never give us the back-story, and there was nothing you could do about it. But now anyone can do a bit of sleuthing and get the back story. And put it on the Internet, and push back on the mainstream media. What a world!
And it often turns out the the helpless victims usually aren't quite as helpless as the mainstream media want us to think.
The way that the ad told the story, poor Joe Soptic was laid off from his steel-plant job and the next thing we know his wife is dying of cancer because he couldn't afford health insurance.
Only now we are getting the details. At the time that Soptic was laid off in 2001 (two years after Mitt left Bain, and after he refused a buy-out) his wife was working and had health insurance.
But in 2002 or 2003 she had to quit her job with a rotator cuff injury. Then she went on disability, it appears.
But wait! If you are on Social Security Disability you can get on Medicare after 24 months, even if you aren't yet 65. Mrs. Soptic, it appears, finally went to the hospital in 2006 with pneumonia and tragically died. But that is at least three years after her accident.
Something doesn't add up. Not if the Soptic family was really concerned about making sure that its members were protected with health insurance.
The new digital media age has changed the rules for the old helpless-victim sob story. It used to be that the mainstream media would roll out the sob story and would never give us the back-story, and there was nothing you could do about it. But now anyone can do a bit of sleuthing and get the back story. And put it on the Internet, and push back on the mainstream media. What a world!
And it often turns out the the helpless victims usually aren't quite as helpless as the mainstream media want us to think.
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