As featured on p. 218 of "Bloggers on the Bus," under the name "a MyDD blogger."
Friday, November 06, 2009
Former Blue Cross Commercial Actor Denounces Insurance Industry
You may know Andy Cobb from the series of humorous video sketches he's done about Republicans, the media, and assorted inanities. But he works by day as an actor. And a few years ago, he was a commercial spokesman for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida. Now, he's speaking out about the insurance industry in a new video produced by Brave New Films for their Sick For Profit campaign (disclosure: I am a blogger fellow on this campaign).
Andy, who lives in Los Angeles, describes himself as a "spokesjerk" put in front of the cameras by the industry to deliberately stand in the way of reform and maintain the status quo. He asks for solidarity from spokesjerks like him - the Sham-wow guy, for example - to stop pitching products that rip off Americans.
The Colbert Report last night featured one of the most subversive and brutally honest half-hours of television in recent memory. It's a sad commentary that it takes a comedy program to provide more news and information on one of the most critical subjects in American politics that anywhere else in our broken media and political landscape, but I'll take this argument wherever I can get it. Colbert spent two full segments of his show focusing on the Citizens United Supreme Court case, which could - and probably will - lead to deregulating the entire campaign finance process, allowing corporations to give unlimited money to any candidate of their choosing. This severe step backwards with enormous implications has been barely discussed in any traditional media setting, but Colbert went after it vigorously, discussing the consequences and even the flawed legal rationale, a true third rail of American politics, corporate personhood. Colbert explained that the 1886 case (Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad) that conferred 14th Amendment equal protection rights onto corporations wasn't even in the original ruling. But when the Chief Justice made an off-hand comment that the Court wouldn't hear an argument on whether the 14th Amendment applied to these corporations (saying, "We are all of the opinion that it does"), the court reporter wrote it into the ruling opinion, and the precedent has held ever since. And that reporter of the Supreme Court didn't only have ties to the railroad barons, he used to run one.
These are subjects you just never hear about in the American media, precisely because the American media is owned by giant multinational corporations, who benefit from the corporate personhood rule and would stand to benefit more from deregulating elections so they could use their "speech" to buy candidates and fund their own with unlimited resources. And despite being on a Viacom-owned network, Colbert says, skewering the immorality and psychopathology of the corporation, "Corporations are legally people... they do everything people do, except breathe, die, and go to jail for dumping 1.3 million pounds of PCBs into the Hudson River."
There's some backstory to that remark. Colbert actually worked with Robert Smigel on the "TV Funhouse" bits from Saturday Night Live (he's one-half of the Ambiguously Gay Duo), including the infamous episode from March 1998, Conspiracy Theory Rock. Here are some of the actual lyrics (remember this aired, albeit one time, on NBC, whose parent company is General Electric):
It's a media-opoly A media-opoly. The whole media is controlled by a few corporations thanks to deregulation by the FCC.
You mean Disney, Fox, WestingHouse, and good ol GE? They own networks from CBS to CNBC. They can use them to say whatever they please, and put down the opinions of any one who disagrees. Or stuff about PCB's.
What are PCB's? They come from power plants built by WestingHouse and GE. They can give you lots of cancer that can hurt your body, but on network TV, you rarely hear anything bad about the nuclear industry [...]
But the bigshots don't care. They're all sitting pretty. Thanks to corporate welfare. What's that now?
They get billions in subsidies from the government. It's supposed to create jobs, but that's not how it's spent.
They pulled this cartoon from the rerun broadcasts and it never aired again.
Colbert didn't just provide this lesson in corporate control of government in his "The Word" segment, but then had Jeffrey Toobin on to explain how the expected Supreme Court ruling would impact elections:
COLBERT: If this goes through, if they decide in favor of the corporations here, what's going to happen to elections?
TOOBIN: Well, they will be essentially deregulated. Corporations will be allowed to give money, corporations will be allowed to broadcast programs that are in favor of one side or another, it'll basically be no more rules about what corporations can do in political campaigns.
COLBERT: Now when I ran for President in 2008, as the Hail to the Cheese Doritos Stephen Colbert campaign for President, I was told that I actually couldn't do that, that I was breaking federal election law by being sponsored by that corporation. But if this goes through, if this court case, if they win, does that mean that I retroactively won the election?
TOOBIN: I don't think it means that.
COLBERT: But could you do that? Could I actually just wear a NASCAR suit and just have logos all over me and run for President as the sort of Gatorade Thirst for Justice campaign for President?
TOOBIN: You definitely could. No question.
COLBERT: What does it mean to individual donation? A corporation, as a person, gets to give any amount of money, but I as a person can give only $2,500.
TOOBIN: That's what's potentially the next legal challenge. Because if giving money is a form of speech, as the Court has held at various times, you can't prohibit a company from giving money. And then presumably the next step would be that you couldn't have limits on how much individuals could give either. That's the potential implication of this decision.
COLBERT: So right now, corporations would actually have more power as people than people, until people catch up with corporations.
Here's the point. Stephen Colbert, a comedian, devoted his show to arcane campaign finance law to show the power of corporations to engage in a hostile takeover of government and extract virtually any law they choose, with no consequences for any wrongdoing. Consequently, the self-described populists on the right - aided by a hapless political class - are working their minions into a frenzy over some unidentified alien "other" coming to take your hard-earned tax dollars, without the pernicious influence of rapacious corporations ever entering into it. Anonymous Liberal had a great post on this yesterday.
But even if you take these film-makers at face value and assume the worst, the reality is that ACORN has thousands of employees and the vast majority of them spend their days trying to help poor people through perfectly legal means (and receive very little compensation for doing so). Even before yesterday's Senate vote, the amount of federal money that went to ACORN was very small. This is a relatively insignificant organization in the grand scheme of things, but it's an organization that has unquestionably fought over the years to improve the lives of the less fortunate in this country.
That the GOP and its conservative supporters would single out this particular organization for such intense demonization is telling. In September of last year, the entire world came perilously close to complete financial catastrophe. We're still not out of the woods and we're deep within one of the worst recessions in U.S. history. This situation was brought about by the recklessness and greed of our banks and financial institutions, most of which had to be bailed out at enormous cost to the American taxpayer (exponentially more than all of the tax dollars given to ACORN over the years). The people who brought about this near catastrophe, for the most, profited immensely from it. These very same institutions, propped up by the American taxpayer, are once again raking in large profits.
But rather than focus their anger on these folks, conservatives choose to go after an organization composed almost entirely of low-paid community organizers, an organization that could never hope to have even a small fraction of the clout or the ability to affect the overall direction of the country that Wall Street bankers have. ACORN's relative lack of political influence was on full display yesterday, when the U.S. Senate (in which Democrats have a supermajority) not only entertained a vote to defund ACORN, but approved it by a huge margin (with only seven Democrats opposing).
Absolutely. Set aside the fact that the Glenn Becks of the world are smearing community organizations that help low-income folks, often at variance with the facts. It's the intensity of focus from the privileged on the poor, the disenfranchised, and yes, minorities, when measured against the influence and giant multinational corporations who are on the verge of buying American elections, that strikes such a discordant note. But not for the hucksters pushing the smears and the paranoids and racists who lap it up. They want to believe that black people have the power in America and they're coming for you and your children, so they can ignore the fact that they've been duped - that the ruling class has controlled the political machinery to keep them underfoot, and handed them welfare queens and illegal immigrants and all sorts of other members of the "lower orders" on which they can focus their attention. This boils down to a largely homogenous class of people not wanting their money, or anything, really, to go to people who don't look like them. "Illegals" or the undeserving poor need not apply. It's been a time-tested tactic going back to Richard Nixon's Southern strategy. And it allows a majority ruling class of whites, terrified that their stranglehold on the country is slipping away, to pretend that a race war is coming when it's the class war grinding them into the dust.
Matt Taibbi called it the peasant mentality. The powers that be get the lower classes to fight amongst themselves and split along ideological or tribal or other identifying lines, leaving room for them to prosper. For Republicans, that means painting their opponents, who are less homogenous and are made up of so-called "outsiders" of society - the poor, the disenfranchised, African-Americans, Hispanics, gays and lesbians, etc. - as undeserving of really anything; and painting the leaders of that party - whether it be a Governor from Arkansas or a war hero from Massachusetts or South Dakota or a multicultural community organizer from Illinois - as the head of a movement to destroy American culture. That's really basically it.
And all the while, both sides in DC studiously ignore the near-complete capture of the country by companies seeking only profit, and the corporate-owned media just follows the manufactured drama and goes mute on the critical stuff, such that it takes a comedian to shine a spotlight on this unexamined corner.
WASHINGTON—After months of committee meetings and hundreds of hours of heated debate, the United States Congress remained deadlocked this week over the best possible way to deny Americans health care.
"Both parties understand that the current system is broken," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Monday. "But what we can't seem to agree upon is how to best keep it broken, while still ensuring that no elected official takes any political risk whatsoever. It’s a very complicated issue."
"Ultimately, though, it's our responsibility as lawmakers to put these differences aside and focus on refusing Americans the health care they deserve," Pelosi added.
I wrote a post a few weeks back about Dem Congresscritters needing to treat the town hall paranoids the way comics treat hecklers. A case in point:
Nobody putting the President of the United States in a Hitler mustache for the crime of wanting to increase access to health care deserves respect. Barney Frank had the microphone and he used it.
For all the conservatives trying to make some equivalence between Code Pink ralliers and lobbyist-supported teabagger groups on their side, please let me know the instances of left-wing protesters physically assaulting politicians:
As lobbyist-run groups encourage conservative activists to “rattle” members of Congress at local town hall events, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), the president of the freshman Democratic class has revealed that “at least one freshman Democrat” has already been “physically assaulted at a local event” by right-wing activists. Connolly warned that conservative groups had taken things to a “dangerous level“:
“When you look at the fervor of some of these people who are all being whipped up by the right-wing talking heads on Fox, to me, you’re crossing a line,’ Connolly said. ‘They’re inciting people to riot with just total distortions of facts. They think we’re going to euthanize Grandma and the government is going to take over.”
I think Harold Meyerson has this right. We've become a Filibuster Nation, with the minority reduced to shouting down the majority, using procedural tricks and rage and in some cases violence to veto the popular will.
Health Care for America Now has a memo on how to counteract the right at these rallies. There are probably a range of options. Invoking the Larouchies would be a start. Just getting the teabaggers on camera spouting their inanities is probably enough for them to embarrass themselves. But shutting up a mob that has shown a propensity for physical assault is probably not going to be handled with reasonable techniques. I'm thinking back to my days as a comic, when I was heckled. I actually enjoyed hecklers, it meant people were paying attention, for one thing. And I found two techniques to be successful:
1) Go meta - you cannot just plow ahead with your presentation. You have to comment on what's happening in the room. And making clear what's happening, essentially speaking for those in the room who aren't shouting, gets that segment of the room on your side. Saying things like "this is a coordinated effort by people funded and directed by Washington lobbyists to deny 47 million people health care" is a start. "Where are you from?" is another.
2) You have a microphone and they don't: use it - people on the fence generally go with the side that they feel has the upper hand. A microphone can be a powerful tool to talk over, above, and through a heckler. It can also be wielded for shaming them, although a politician probably has to do this tactfully.
There probably aren't a lot of former comics among the Congress outside of Al Franken, but they should maybe take some advice from him. I mean, these people at the town halls aren't even belligerent drunks! They will, however, try to beat you up after the show, just like regular hecklers.
...TPM has a live news wire of events happening on the ground, which may be useful.
Winners Of The Village Open Mike Comedy Award For "Outstanding Spirit!"
Chris Cillizza and Dana Milbank, after practicing in their basement for days, have a HIGH-larious response to criticism over their comedy gold of calling Hillary Clinton a bitch.
The proper lesson to have inferred would have been this: IF the Washington Post's website has a feature that only receives substantial attention for how bad it is, and that no one pays any mind to were it not for an awful, mean-spirited joke, THEN perhaps it is a feature that the website can do without. Or, alternately, they can ride the traffic generated by the world's outrage, which is what I gather Fred Hiatt does, on the op-ed page, where people just make stuff up.
Don't worry though! Nobody's learned a gollydarned thing! Today, Mouthpiece Theatre returns with a "response video," in which Cillizza and Milbank basically whine about having been criticized by the blogosphere.
Of course, the two never make any apology, or, indeed, any overt mention of the brouhaha to which they are referring, so if you weren't paying attention last week, you have no clue what they are even doing today. But that's all beside the important point that they are making: HOW DARE the blogosphere notice when two grown men act like jackasses, on web videos! Leave Britney alone!
The worst thing about this video, which isn't worth the effort to embed, is the Marriott hotels ad placed right before it. Is Marriott endorsing the naming of Hillary Clinton as a bitch? Is the hotel chain endorsing the most unfunny comedy since "East German Economist Night O' Yuks" back in the '80s?
Here's some actual humor, and I guess the best thing that can be said about Mouthpiece Theater is that without them, this biting satire wouldn't exist:
Brilliant. NBC has taken it down now, but William Shatner did an interpretive reading of Sarah Palin's farewell speech, which actually made it work far better than Palin did. Maybe he should show up at her campaign speeches and stand in the corner like the closed captioning person, offering his version for those who would rather just laugh.
I too miss funny Al. And while I understand the desire not to give the right any openings, if he truly wants to follow the legacy of Paul Wellstone, he's going to have to be loud and unyielding. And you use what you've got, and for Franken, that's wit. So the whole "I want to be a work horse, not a show horse" thing makes sense at the beginning, but I hope he doesn't forget his roots. I'm not looking for him to pull out a full-length mirror or put a mobile satellite dish on his head, but some occasional displays of satire or sarcasm will do.
I don't think you can find a more perfect summation of the traditional media inside Washington than this - Dana Milbank and Chris Cillizza dressed like fops in bowties and smoking jackets - or more likely, dressed like their own mental projection of themselves - smugly discoursing, with CHAMBER MUSIC in the background, about Beltway gossip. You would think they'd go ahead and use the British accents too.
Amazingly, this isn't a product of two You Tubers engaging in a parody of the Village mindset, but a video produced by two of the top political reporters at the Washington Post. Two respected figures inside the Beltway, who get all kinds of face time on major media.
I think at this point, we can stop asking "If only the media would cover such-and-such story in THIS way..." For that to be successful, we would have to get such a story covered by someone like these two. That's just not going to happen.
Aside from asking why anyone would do a rap parody 30 years after Grandmaster Flash hit the turntables, I'm actually going to have to give mad credit to the Young Conservative Rappers in this bit for managing to wedge in every talking point from the past 30 years into a 4-minute song.
I don't speak lies, I just spit out da facts 28% the new capital gains tax
Actually, considering that white male conservatives are the real oppressed, persecuted minority these days, it makes perfect sense to hit the streets (of a university library), put on their representin' clothes (suits without ties) and get in the struggle. Fight the power, my brothers.
Give Andrew Breitbart credit for writing about his own self-immolation, but this is just a perfect example of the paranoid style of modern conservatism. I can't do better than Sadly, No on this one, but I'm thinking of filming the live-action short for screening at the Liberty Film Festival. Click the link and delight in the tale of a man so consumed by looking out for perceived slights that he ends up flipping off a demonstration against child soldiers in Uganda.
Wanda Sykes' comments at the White House Correspondents Dinner actually provoked less of a hissy fit than I expected, but still provided a good amount of hypocritical hilarity. Sean Hannity, who ran hourlong specials comparing Barack Obama to terrorists like Bill Ayers during the election campaign, sits there and gets all offended by Sykes comparing Limbaugh to a terrorist. And so on. Adam Serwer rounds it up pretty nicely.
Wanda Sykes' comedy routine at the White House Correspondent's Dinner was really offensive. In it, Sykes suggested that conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh is supported by Hamas, and that Islamists are "constantly issuing Limbaugh talking points." She joked about terrorists supporting conservatives in general, suggesting that recent violent events in Iraq are attempts by terrorists to swing the upcoming midterm elections in favor of Republicans.
Then she got really personal. She joked that Limbaugh was a racist who doesn't want black people to "escap[e] the underclass." She accused him of being responsible for killing "a million babies a year," and aired her friend's theory that Limbaugh himself was a terrorist attack," a followup to 9/11. She also, most disgustingly, said that if conservatives kept apologizing to Limbaugh, they'd eventually contract "anal poisoning." She wondered when Republicans would finally stop "bending over and grabbing their ankles" for Limbaugh, and finally concluded that Limbaugh was just a "bad guy."
Oh wait. Wanda Sykes didn't say any of these things. These are things Rush Limbaugh has said about Obama or other Democrats in the past year...
Notably, Big Pharma himself had nothing to say about Sykes' act, maybe because he was mindful of his own past statements, but probably because he doesn't want anyone on his radio show to remember his Oxycontin addiction. Helpfully, Chris Hitchens provided the classy quote Limbaugh would have said, if he thought he could get away with it.
By the end of the night, Christopher Hitchens was of course the last man (barely) standing, and he had some choice words for the evening's headlining comedian, Wanda Sykes. "The president should be squirming in his seat. Not smiling," he said. "The black dyke got it wrong. No one told her the rules."
Incidentally, there is a 10.31 Project website, but it only has the picture up write now.
The transcript of this would actually be a direct contrast to the respectful take on Beck from the New York Times, so eager are they to ingratiate themselves with conservatives and not offend their delicate sensibilities. My favorite part of that:
In an interview, Mr. Beck, who recently rewatched the 1976 film “Network,” said he identified with the character of Howard Beale, the unhinged TV news anchorman who declares on the air that he is “mad as hell.”
“I think that’s the way people feel,” Mr. Beck said. “That’s the way I feel.”
Network was a satire, you idiot. About the vacuous nature of the news media. Which you exemplify.
Ed Henry has posted a breathless work of staggering back-patting about life inside the fast-paced world of asking pointless gotcha questions to the President, and how ya gotta think on your feet and make yourself as central to the story as possible:
At the first presser in February, I was about the 10th reporter the president called on. The economy had been chewed over so I went with a "sidebar" question about whether Obama, given his push for transparency, would overturn the policy at Dover Air Force Base preventing media coverage of coffins returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
It was a surprise line of inquiry. The president made news by saying the policy was under review -- and a few weeks later he overturned it.
I was heading into this event with the same strategy: make news on something unexpected (I won't tell you which topics I was working on cause it would ruin the surprise for a future presser or interview with the president).
Ezra has this right - Mr. Henry apparently got the impression from his journalism training that his role is to make news.
"Make news" is an interesting formulation for a reporter. I'm pretty sure the J School graduates are taught to "report" news, or maybe "explain" news. But creating news is rather a different goal. Inserting himself into the story, however, is well-aligned with Ed Henry's incentives. A lot more people know Ed Henry's name today than did a week ago. Henry can now write a column congratulating himself for standing tall in the face of the President's ire. It's similarly well-aligned with his industry's incentives. Though the American people might appreciate seeing the President offer a substantive explanation of his policy ideas -- 32 million of them, after all, watched the press conference for exactly that -- it's not the sort of thing that the cable channels can replay in bite-sized chunks. They're better off "making" a new news story that can lead tomorrow's Situation Room.
That's right. Journalism when caught up with commerce creates truly perverse incentives, where becoming the story is much more important than chasing the truth. Of course, the public has the choice of not participating in this by turning off their television every time Ed Henry is on. In a sense we get what we deserve, but in truth the alternative has not yet been tried.
Meanwhile, Henry's rant does have some value - it yielded this great parody about ed Henry visiting a Jack in the Box from Davenoon. Read in full.
I am a film and video editor, stand-up comedian, and blogger. My editor resume is here. A sample of my stand-up is here. The blog is what you're reading right now. Wasn't that easy?
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