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Julia, a tragedy in twelve acts

I confess — I feel more than a twinge of sympathy for the stupid drone (or, more likely, committee of drones) who came up with this Julia thing. I’ve done a thousand crappy educational slideshows just like it. Everything looks fine in bullet point form on the memo, and nobody spots the flaws, unintended messages and double entendres until it goes live and singes everyone’s eyebrows off.

The brief: show how Obama’s policies benefit women throughout their lives (do please stress the woman thing; they’re pushing that at the moment). Hey, I know, let’s take one woman — we’ll call her Julia — and look at a dozen points in her life when our policies could help her out. Easy peasy, light and breezy.

But once you string the whole thing together, it becomes the sad story of a woman with no face, no friends, no family. No lover, no husband, a son begat of turkey baster (who gets on a bus one day and is never seen again). She’s a gormless thing who needs a government handout at every turn. It takes her seven years to get a degree and then she takes a low-paying job that doesn’t require one. And when she’s old and her codin’ days are done, she hoes beans for free in a communal veg plot. Alone.

Oh, and apparently Obama is president for seventy years.

The problem with most of the programs in the slideshow is that they’re either small amounts, narrowly targeted beneficiaries or both. With the exception of education and Social Security — and nobody believes Obama or anybody else has got those licked — Julia gets a small amount of free stuff almost nobody gives a shit about. There’s absolutely fuck-all to be passionate about here.

F’rexample, the only people who care about the cost of birth control pills are women of childbearing age who want them. And women of childbearing age who want to be on the pill are the exact people who know that the pill isn’t very expensive or hard to get. Because, you know, they’re buying them now.

To the barricades, Comrades! The Romney/Ryan budget could cut programs like the Small Business Administration by 20%!

Oh, that poor Flashmonkey. Good weekend, all!

May 4, 2012 — 10:15 pm
Comments: 28