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, December 18, 2013

2013: The Year of the Great Footie Pajama Debate Over the Fate of Millennials

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The future of American politics now rests on the ability of healthy people in their twenties to purchase health insurance. If not enough of the “invincibles,” as they’re now being called, enroll in the health insurance exchanges, the risk pools required to make Obamacare work will descend into a death spiral, and with them, the grand liberal project for the foreseeable future. And so we have a tug-of-war: the Obama administration and affiliated outside groups launching a PR push to get young people to enroll versus the Republicans and outside conservative groups telling them not to. As a self-employed twenty eight-year-old myself, I think this is funny and should probably be fielding bribes, but never mind.

So. How do we reach these kids?

Organizing for Action, the president’s campaign-cum-PAC which runs the @BarackObama Twitter account, has started the hashtag — young people love hashtags! — #GetTalking to urge parents to talk to their young adult spawn about purchasing insurance over the holidays. Last night, the account dropped this latest, decidedly twee offering:

The tweet was embraced strongly — by conservatives, who see this stock photo fellow sipping cocoa in his pajama onesie as the avatar of everything their great project opposes. He is a weak, liberal, girly man: urbane, snarky, probably attended a northern liberal arts college, hates the military, unemployable, and either a straight virgin or a gay slut. The collapse of traditional American values is him.

 

Basically, they’re calling him a faggot.

Reading into a stock model’s gender issues and likely political beliefs is a bit beyond my pay grade. Even so, though: What is this shit? The onesie and cocoa are a bit much, and you have to wonder if the promoters of the health law really do view all twentysomethings without health insurance as man-children.

“Pajama boy” is the latest in what Buzzfeed’s McKay Coppins, in a nice little piece, calls the “weird, embarrassing, vaguely pathetic Obamacare battle over twentysomethings.” He goes through some of the outreach efforts over the past year: the “brosurance” keg stand ad in Colorado, a “Drop It Like It’s Hot” music video spoof produced by the California health exchange, and the “Creepy Uncle Sam” video by the Koch-backed Generation Opportunity, which suggested to young women that a demonic Uncle Sam clown would rape them if they chose plans offered under the Affordable Care Act. All of these things went viral, as Coppins notes, but mostly because people were making fun of them, not because they shifted young peoples’ attitudes about whether or not to procure health insurance. The makers of all of them seem to suggest that the defining trait of twentysomethings is a lack of seriousness, and so they appeal to that. Instead of, say, precarity.

What do all millennials want? Easy now, I’m not walking into that trap, although I will walk right up to the edge of it. Let’s just say that David Freddoso might be on to something here:

So it’s just my hunch, but I’d expect the least appealing kind of ad is the one that tells you you’re still a child. If I wanted to appeal to millennial customers or voters, I’d treat them a bit more seriously.

I need to sign up for a health insurance plan before the end of the year. I intend to do that, and not because I saw a wacky bit of multimedia on the Internet. Instead, sober information about the cost of medical care gets the job done. Brian Beutler, for example, writing about how he was walking down the street one night and got pumped full of lead, requiring $200,000 worth of medical care, speaks well enough to me. Perhaps I’m an outlier! All millennials are different, la la la . . .