THIS WEEK IN DISGUSTING: The Koch Brothers: Obamacare is coming to physically penetrate you

David and Charles Koch, tied for fourth place on Forbes' Richest People in America list, are naturally no fan of President Obama, nor of his plan to make health care more affordable to more Americans, destroy the insurance industry by giving it millions of new paying customers, and bankrupt businesses by giving them a healthier workforce.

The billionaire Brothers, notable as the founders of Americans for [the] Prosperity [of the Koch Brothers], have also sunk money into an independent group called Meaningless Platitude Generation Opportunity, which has just released the most fantastically awful series of ads aimed at convincing young people to opt out of the required purchase and assistance of the Affordable Care Act, pay the fine, and continue to be uninsured.

How to convince young people to shun a program that helps them get health care, which they might not otherwise be able to afford, and instead to pay more money to continue getting nothing?



Oh!  By telling them they'll get stuff stuck up their butts.

Everyone knows that the one thing young men hate worse than paying money is another guy's fingers in their butts.  So all they need to do is opt out, pay the fine, and their buttholes will remain untouched by everything except the cancer that might have been detected.

Wait, it gets worse:



Nothing like a little rape terror to make your political point, eh.

It's not so much that the implication of the ad is completely false, although it is.  In both the ads, the respective doctors say something along the lines of "I see you're new to Obamacare" or "I see you've signed up for Obamacare," as if it were the organ donor program.  The doctor shouldn't give a hoot whether you use Obamacare or not, any more than your digestive system notices if the food you just ate was bought with food stamps.  What the Kochs are assuming is that their target audience thinks that Obamacare is a public option (which would be nice, but that's an argument for a different day), when it's actually an assistance program meant to help people buy insurance from the already existing private insurers.  If you're insured with Blue Cross, and you used Obamacare to buy into it, all that matters to your doctor is that you're insured with Blue Cross.  Obamacare doesn't enter (physically or otherwise) into the exam room whatsoever.

But never mind: these ads are, like most mainstream right-wing arguments, targeted at the ill-informed and misinformed.

What gets me is that the commercial is so incredibly vulgar and cheap.  Bereft of real ideas, the Kochs have elected to shoot for the absolute lowest common denominator for political scare tactics.  And I don't just mean that creepy perma-smile Uncle Sam mask, which doesn't make me afraid of doctor's offices but does admittedly make me a little queasy around Burger King.

WE'RE COMING FOR YOU.

It's that the Kochs are so out of arguments that they're forced to use fear of physical penetration as their cue.  As a left-winger I'm no ardent fan of Obamacare, though it's a step in the right direction and hopefully a bridge to a more socially conscious, nationally inclusive and efficient form of health care.  It's not the simplest legislation out there; certainly there was some mode of criticism the Kochs could have followed, other than "Opt out, or get raped"?  Even a critical ad that was patently misleading about the law might be worthy of debate.  This campaign is just cowardly hogwash, preying on the instinctive fears of young people.

And at the expense of two necessary and helpful procedures, no less.  The young man is, of course, petrified of the rectal exam, because... well, he's scared at the prospect of being gay, I suppose.  I'm frequently surprised at the prevalence of gay panic in pop culture even nowadays; I was recently as flummoxed by a scene in A Haunted House (likely to be a Cinemasochism entry soon) in which the brutal rape of Marlon Wayans by a ghost is played for laughs, because he doesn't want to appear gay, yuk yuk.

The Koch ads don't play it for just yuks, although I have to assume the makers had a good ol' boy laugh while conceiving it.  They not only assume a ridiculous homophobia on its audience, but also demonize and marginalize the exam itself.  The gynecological exam is also conflated with rape, with the image of the scary Uncle Sam wielding the speculum and the young lady's legs quivering with fear.  Barf.

Never mind that the right wing has yet to heed constant warnings to stay away from rape and to stay out of the OB/GYN business.  This one manages to tackle both!  The image that pops into my mind when Uncle Sam descends on the poor scared girl isn't of President Obama, but of Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia or Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania, or any of the Republican governors and legislators who've enacted laws that require doctors to do essentially what Uncle Sam's doing in that second video, to women who've elected to terminate pregnancy.

The ads are a logical and political mess, but it's that desperation that makes them really awful.  They're so base, condescending and just downright dirty.  I don't mean dirty in the sense that they're unfair or untrue, although they are.  But they're also just icky.  Slimy.  Gross.  Creepy.  The Kochs' and Generation Opportunity's proposal that young people ought to stay uninsured is ridiculous, but the notion that this concept would appeal to anyone--that anyone would take it seriously enough to be scared by it, or worse, that anyone would find it clever or funny--is insulting.