There's No Cure For Stupid

What a way to sell the idea of health insurance to the young people of America. Automatically assume that all 20-somethings are either sluts, drunks, painkiller addicts, sexual predators, exhibitionists, or all of the above. Not to mention dumber than dirt. Not to mention cartoonish.  These ads for Obamacare are currently running (online only, thank god) in Colorado:

 

So here's the problem. Even if these attractive dissipated models existed in the real world, they'd  never in a million years be able to navigate the website, let alone click on their computers.... let alone remember if they have a computer. I think that if I were a 20-something and looked at these ads, I'd be insulted enough to go without insurance, just out of spite.

 

The subliminal message to what O-Care marketers call the "Young Invincibles" is that their wild and crazy lifestyles make them prime candidates for those middle-of-the-night E.R. visits. Getting your stomach pumped out costs money, people. (To be fair, one of the ads is aimed at mountain bikers, who presumably aren't drunk when they break their numerous bones.) 

 

And needless to say, this ad campaign is already pure gold for the right wing. It's free premium gasoline ready for the pouring on the anti-Obamacare flames. Fox News will now likely announce that the president wants to turn all our pure young folks into hedonistic freaks. Obama is hooking girls on free birth control and urging them to have lots and lots of sex! And drink lots and lots of Shotskis! (that's when kids go to a party and drink shots off a ski. In case you didn't know. I didn't, until Urban Dictionary enlightened me.)

 

Ross Douthat, resident 20-something fogey at the New York Times, is probably writing it up for his Sunday column even as we speak. Remember all the fun he had with Obama's get-out-the-female vote "Life of Julia" and how she scored those evil contraceptives before milking the State for Medicare? Poor responsible Julia pales in comparison with this latest cast of characters.

 

I truly regret that I didn't sign up for Obama's conference call* with supporters Monday night. Because I would like to ask him what the hell his P.R. people were thinking. Makes me wonder if he even cares whether Obamacare goes down the tubes, especially since the ads were brought to the attention of HHS Sec. Kathleen Sebelius at that Senate hearing. Any deniability on the part of the White House at this point is simply not plausible.

 

GOP Senators, phony deficit hawks all, were mainly concerned that the ads are taxpayer-funded or government issue. They're not. My first thought was that it was an Onion parody. It's not. Like many other aspects of Obamacare, the publicity has all been neoliberally contracted out. Funnily enough, nobody seems to want to take credit for the Colorado murketing campaign, called doyougotinsurance.com.

 

They don't got no courage, I guess.

 

 

*Update 11/19: Silly me. It was not, as advertised, a Q&A at all. But it did have its moments of humor, apparently. Such as, when the Prez told listeners he wanted to "cut through the noise" he couldn't, because the call was a nightmare of white noise and buffering, buffering, buffering. But his handlers said 200,000 people did attempt to listen in, and that's all that counts in the grand scheme of things... his numbers.