Here’s a pretty amazing cross-polanization of two subjects I write about; one I feel compelled to write about because seeing it makes me cringe so (the GOP further alienating the women’s vote) and the other I write about because it amuses me to no end (bad political ads). So I have absolutely no idea what to do with this.
On the one hand, it’s a pretty terrible schadenfreude-inducing ad. The production value is high and the acting is fine, but that just kind of adds to the mystery of why it was ever approved. The message appears to be targeting women voters, but it appears to have been written and conceived by frat guys. Or to be more exact, it appears to have been written and conceived by the kind of frat guys that can’t understand why their dates don’t think it’s hilarious when they make rape jokes. I don’t know whether I want to love it or hate it in all of it’s terribleness.
It’s really, really creepy.
You have been warned.
Oops! Almost forgot! Hat tip to Sully and the Dish.
You weren’t kidding about the creepy. It’s so creepy it makes me want to do the opposite of whatever it is they’re asking of me.Report
Wow!!! The anti-ocare crowd just seems like one sorry bunch of lying jerks. Maybe i’m just feeling cranky after a real long, but very good day of vacation. But i doubt its just me being crankier than normal.Report
Yeah, that really is disturbing.Report
Is that a Burger King ad?Report
space awesomeReport
I said this is in con post but Jonathan Bernstein thinks this is the ne plus ultra of scam ads:
http://plainblogaboutpolitics.blogspot.com/
“Will it have any effect on actual consumer behavior? I doubt it. But it is worth noting that if it does “work” at all, it’s going to work on the people who respond best to the affect evoked by the ads: in other words, people already primed and ready to hate Obama(care), people already primed and ready to hate the government of the United States, people primed and ready to suspect the very worst of the program. And do note: the way it “works” is by convincing them to go without health insurance.
So basically: if you’re a rich conservative who isn’t very smart about how you give your money, this ad is designed to pick your pocket. If you’re a non-rich conservative, you might get duped into some foolish behavior, but that’s just acceptable collateral damage. For everyone else, it’s an occasion for (to be fair, entirely justified) outrage, I suppose, but basically it’ll come and go without any real effects.”
Jonathan Chait seems to think the ad shows authenticity because of how absolutely weird it is:
“What makes the ads so distinctive, aside from their Ayn Randhead–on-acid gestalt, is that they abandon the predominant appeal conservatives have been making to the young, which centers on financial self-interest. Conservatives have been hammering home the “rate shock” story for months, arguing that young people will have to pay higher insurance premiums to subsidize worse insurance risks and would be better off going uninsured. The story is wildly overblown — it usually ignored tax credits, which drives down the cost of insurance, and likewise assumes that minimizing risk has no value in and of itself — but it does contain a germ of truth.
The rape-clown argument, by contrast, is the product of sheer fantasy. In what world does giving people tax credits to offset the cost of private insurance subject them to the risk of some kind of dystopian federal intrusion? There is actually an answer to this question: in Betsy McCaughey’s world. McCaughey is a prominent fantasist/conservative health-care analyst, known for promoting the most lurid fears of health-care reform, up to and including death panels. McCaughey has most recently been peddling nightmare scenarios that Obamacare will cause doctors to ask intrusive questions about your sex life, which you can see debunked by James Hamblin here.
Within the conservative information cocoon, where the news about Obamacare has been a ceaseless procession of disasters, McCaughey is a sage figure. And, what’s more, the free-floating terror of intrusive government is a closer approximation than some dry appeal to actuarial odds of how conservatives actually feel about Obamacare.”
In another context, I saw someone else wonder if we are now entering the all-troll economy. That context was sensationalized on-line writing and clickbait designed to make people very angry and outraged. Umbrage seems to be the great American emotion now. The right-wing con machine seems to have mastered trolling to a super-genius level. They know how to raise the ire of both liberals and the fears of older conservatives at the same time.Report
Hasn’t umbridge and outrage always been the great American emotion since the Salem Witchcraft Trials? The social history of the United States is one of continual moral panics.Report
There is your thesis if you ever want to go to grad school for a Masters or PhD in History.Report
continual moral panics
I panic whenever I suspect I might have morals.Report
@newdealer that’s a thesis I’d at least read the precis of.Report
Thesis precis are my favourite intellectual confectionery.Report
I panic whenever I suspect I might have morals.
Heh. You’re on the path to Total Liberation! (From what I hear, anyway.)Report
Thesis precis are my favourite intellectual confectionery.
Awesome.Report
Actually James, to fill that thought out some, I think if God could eliminate moral discourse from our social and political debates about policy and society, things would not (could not!) get any worse. But I’ve never been too keen on capital M moralistic reasoning. And I’m a liberal. So youknow, take what I’m saying for what it’s worth.Report
Stillwater, I always take what you’re saying for what it’s worth.Report
Then we’re in agreement!Report
Eh, I wouldn’t go that far.Report
I panic whenever I suspect I might have morals.
It’s better than scruples.
They keep you up at night. (((looks sheepishly at the ground)))Report
On the plus side, they didn’t give Uncle Sam dark skin.Report
How is that the plus side? Uncle Samuel L. Jackson would have been awesome.Report
Like space snakes on a motherfishing space plane awesome.Report
“We Want You!”
“Who, me?”
“Say ‘me?’, again, motherfisher! Say ‘me?’ one more g-d time!”Report
Why are they against this? Isn’t this what they’ve been pushing on women seeking abortions?Report
@nob-akimoto
No, that’s the state governments, Uncle Utah and Aunt Alabama (e.g.).Report
“Why are they against this? Isn’t this what they’ve been pushing on women seeking abortions?”
Perhaps I’m seeing things as a liberal, but *all* right-wing propaganda has been pure Freudian propaganda, for a couple of decades now:
1) Accusations of sexual misconduct by people who shock me with what they do.
2) Accusations of unfaithfulness by people who go through wives like disposable items.
3) Accusations of cowardice and disloyalty to country by people who (as a group) seem to have had ‘other priorities’ than fighting in the wars they support, and who happily denounce America and call for it’s punishment whenever it does things that they hate.
4) Accusations of living off government largesse by people who live off of government salaries, agricultural subsidies, fat public pensions, lifetime government healthcare, and fat ‘consulting’ jobs from people whom they helped while in government.
5) Accusations of warring against God from people who Jesus would probably take a whip to.
And so on.Report
Fairness alert! They made one aimed at men, too.Report
Thank you, @burt-likko, for sharing that.
Fairness, indeed.
For some reason, I suspect that his ad will be far more effective at discouraging enrollment in Obamacare than hers.Report
Creepy is an understatement. They’re just so… inappropriate.
The male and female patients are my age, so going in for wellness exam is not a totally unreasonable “plot”, but my doctor chatting with me about my insurance before the exam and basing my quality of care on my plan kind of is. So the producers are trying to tell me that all doctor’s who will serve me if I have ObamaCare are going to be sub-par and basically make me feel like I’m having an uncomfortable sexual experience instead of an exam? Somehow I think not.Report
I think those ads just crossed the line twice and came out on the side of awesomeness in a very weird sense. Or the stress of a late thesis submission has basically driven me insane.Report
I’ve been wondering: How do you sign up for ‘Obamacare?’ Does that mean signing up for health insurance in the exchanges?
So the whole parable here, that these young people have purchased insurance instead of being uninsured, a play on the whole Florida debacle — insinuating that your doctor is going to have access to your private financial info that might get you a subsidy on the premium?Report
Even not having the same kind of parts as the main character, I’m seriously creeped out by that smile.Report