Real Question from White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl: "Is anybody going to buy health care because "Barack Obreezy" tells them to buy it, because it's hot?"

Wow. That's his real, actual question. That isn't one of my fake "he said something like this" sort of headlines.

I think someone just earned himself a starring role on Media Matters for the next year or eight.

Karl's question isn't out of left field. He's asking whether all these silly advertising/promotion stunts -- Footie Pajama Guy being the most recent -- are really sufficient to encourage young people to pay a lot of money for what they previously did not purchase when it cost much less money.

Q What do you make of some of these efforts by Obamacare supporters to reach out? I mean, some of them — the upside-down keg stands and whatnot. I mean, is anybody going to buy health care because “Barack Obreezy” tells them to buy it because it’s hot?

Jay Carney blathers something or other about reaching consumers.

And speaking of reaching consumers: The left has a theory about why the right is goofing on Footie Pajama Guy. That theory (please seat yourself for this shocker) is that the right hates gays n' stuff. There is a great deal of outrage over this, with the left straining to find people on the right who called the guy gay, and only coming up with Twitter users I never heard of.

But yeah, sure, let's ignore the fact that this is a "curious" choice for an Obamacare pitchman (as acknowledged the Very Outraged lefty linked above). Let's ignore that this picture demonstrates a type of arrested-development man-child, having a Second Childhood immediately after his first one. Let's ignore the fact that the picture is almost proudly embracing the perpetual infantalization of what used to be called "adults."

And let's pretend the right didn't goof on these insulting, camp advertisements even when the subjects were engaging in stereotypical heterosexual male behavior:

For the love of Pete, they're a few pixels away from an ad featuring a guy asking his friend, "Smell my finger. Does she smell insured?"

Let's pretend that this is just about the fact that the guy might be gay so we can be all outraged about it.

And by the way: What makes the left so sure this guy is gay, rather than just another childlike hipster?

You can always count on the left to play a vigorous game of Find the Homo and then accuse others of having started it.

Allah has a lot more thoughts on this "curious" choice of model (as an Outraged Lefty in Good Standing freely admits).

David Freddoso notes what I keep noting: Isn't the left's depiction of young people in the service of attracting young people rather, well, completely insulting to young people?

I didn’t score well on that Millennial quiz that someone posted recently, but I suspect young people don’t typically prefer to think of themselves as grown children, nor as keg-standing beer-swillers, nor as promiscuous tarts ready to jump into bed with whatever sketchy guy shows them some attention (“Oh, look! I have my free birth control!”) — yet this is precisely how health insurance (of all things) is now being marketed to them.

People like to think of themselves as cool, which often means "fun-loving" and a little bit "offbeat."

But no man wants to think of himself as either a shouty, drunken meathead or, alternatively, as a twee goof in footie pajamas. And I don't think women want to think of themselves as so terribly shallow as to, quite literally, only care about a major health care law to the extent it buys them birth control pills so they can fornicate with "hot guys."

Feminist leftists spend half of their time insisting that women are more than their reproductive functions and, it seems, the other half insisting they are only that.

It's very strange seeing the imagery and messages that the mutants of the political left think that young people will respond to. Because when someone guesses "This will appeal to other people," their first guide is what will appeal to they themselves.

So this, then, is how Obama's minions think about themselves, first of all.

How pathetic.

posted by Ace at 04:00 PM

| Access Comments