Reporter Loses Mind, Calls Obamacare “Iraq War”
In the hyperbolic unicorn-dust bubble that is the Twitterverse, mistakes happen.
And increasingly, they happen because people paid to cover the news, from whichever perspective, forget that they’re adults, and just blat out anything they heard in a bar:
is Obamacare President Obama's Iraq War?
— Jonathan Strong (@j_strong) October 21, 2013
Ana Marie Cox at the Guardian must be long-suffering, because she actually takes the time to debunk this fantasy, as if it weren’t self-debunked already:
As offensive as Strong’s analogy is to, well, anyone, it’s perhaps more instructive than he intended: imagine if the ACA had the kind of blindly optimistic bipartisan support enjoyed by the Iraq War. Imagine if the Obama administration had been able to embed reporters in among enthusiastic and over-prepared participants. Imagine if the ACA’s explosions had painted pretty colors in the night sky.Instead, the ACA is the polar opposite of the Iraq war, not just in terms of aim (saving lives versus taking them), but in terms of a model for political cooperation and press coverage. The ACA created ruthless, even suicidal political opposition: if the Democrats had responded to even the rumors of disaster at the beginning of the Iraq war (and we were warned) the way that the GOP has dug its heels in on Obamacare – shut the government down until Bush admitted defeat and withdrew – then the chart of how many deaths each had caused might not look quite as tragic. Though it would still look pretty tragic.
There’s more, and it’s a solid piece; take a look.
