Presenting the Worst Health Care Issue Spot, Ever: 'I Guess I'm a Racist'
Any video emailed to you with the words "oh christ" as the only context with which to view it is worth a look. This did not disappoint. Via Andrew Sullivan, presenting the worst issue-ad I've seen in a long time.
This is the worst thing telling me what's racist and what isn't since Crash. It's that bad:
A few thoughts come to mind:
1. No, you're racist because you fear/hate/assume/stereotype/pigeonhole [insert various ethnicity]. Also, because you're an ignoramus.
2. Really? People think the people opposed to Obama's health care plan are racists? No. If they're opposed to Obama because they're racist, that's one thing. Those people exist! And they're probably opposed to all of his policies, not just health care. People are most likely opposed to Obama's health care plan because there's some provision in it they disagree with, or because it trends in a direction they don't feel like having our government go.
3. If you hate Obama because he's black, then yes, you're a racist. And you should flush your face into another universe. Also, the use of multiple minorities in this video is especially disingenuous, as if to imply that people from other ethnicities can't be racist, because they're from other ethnic backgrounds! Which is something only someone who hasn't spent any time around other ethnic groups would be ignorant enough to imply or stupid enough to take as true.
4. Do the people who made this understand the concept of projecting? Really: this red herring is dead and it smells like ass, or more appropriately, horseshit. Has the opposition of Obama's health care plan developed a persecution complex about being racist? There's a reason it's a complex. If you're so concerned about being a racist, you should probably do things to prevent being perceived as a racist. And the people stupid enough to perceive you as a racist for something that patently doesn't make you one are stupid, so why listen to them?
5. Forgetting the fact that the first guy looks curious like George W. Bush, or that whole "I guess I'm a racist" thing. The lede is buried, or as Andrew Sullivan puts it, the ad is most effective by sneaking the real propaganda at the end:
Conflating wider worries about the intensity of vaguely articulated loathing of Obama as racially tinged with specific worries about health insurance reform is, however, a useful piece of sophism. But really: a total government take-over of the healthcare system? For a reform where almost every newly insured person will get coverage under a private insurance company and get prescription drugs from private drug companies and get treated in non-government-run hospitals? Sigh.
Lying liars are not only liars about what racists they are, but about what they're racist about, too. People suck. Or as I emailed back: for fuck's sake.