Creepy Anti-Obamacare Ads Suggest Where Uncle Sam Wants to Stick It
Independent groups are now directly targeting consumers with way vivid warnings about using the new health-insurance exchanges.
What is with the obsession with anal penetration?
Rush Limbaugh is famous for his talk of "anal poisoning" and as long ago as January 2009 said of the new administration: “We are being told that we have to hope [Obama] succeeds, that we have to bend over, grab the ankles." It's something you hear all too often in the political arena as the ultimate description of political submission. There's even a "Bend Over" anti-Obama bumper sticker.
Now an independent conservative group called Generation Opportunity is taking that metaphor and making it visual with a couple of new advertisements designed to creep out young people, get them talking, and discourage them from signing up for health insurance through the Obamacare exchanges opening for enrollment on October 1.
"Take your pants off," says a doctor to a young man in one spot, "The Glove."
"Hop up here, lay down and bend your knees to your chest," the doctor says.
Then he leaves the room and a man wearing a giant, demented Uncle Sam mask and full costume pops up and snaps his blue glove. Take-home: If you sign up for health insurance, this is where the government is going to stick it.
The second spot, "The Exam," features a similar scenario, except it's a woman visiting a gynecologist, with her feet in stirrups, who is abandoned by her physician for a speculum-waving horror movie figure of Uncle Sam. It's like Chucky meets Girls meets the some kind of terrible Fourth of July parade costume.
The intentionally creepy ads -- Generation Opportunity dubs their character "creepy Uncle Sam" -- are part of what Yahoo reports will be a six-figure fall campaign at 20 college campuses to discourage healthy young people from joining the exchanges, which can only succeed if healthy young people as well as older, sicker people sign up for them.
Also launching Thursday was a new anti-Obamacare ad from Americans for Prosperity, which is targeted at older female consumers, asking them to contact their representatives to complain about the law. These ads are set to run in swing states and have $3.1 million behind them, USA Today reports.
Both Generation Opportunity and Americans for Prosperity are part of the billionaire Koch brothers-funded empire of independent groups seeking to influence public policy in a more free-market direction.