Easy to Be Hard

Apparently if you want to be one of the kewl kids in news media you must badmouth the Obamacare rollout and declare every stumble as proof of Doom. See Dear Journalists: Your privilege is clouding your perspective on Obamacare website glitches.

If I see one more journalist symbolically log on to the Obamacare website, I’m going to scream. If you’re making faux calls into the call center, only to complain about the lack of hold music, as if that is what’s critically important here, you’re severely missing the point.

And even when you defend your negative reporting about the Obamacare website glitches, as The Washington Post‘s Ezra Klein did last night on MSNBC, having the privilege of analyzing the process from the perspective of someone who is already insured and not in need of coverage allows the core impact of the new program on the health and security of millions of Americans to be missed….

… And unless you are a journalist who has been chronically uninsured, your feigned frustration about website issues reeks of privilege. To me, a few website glitches are a lot less frustrating than having to use the same inhaler for over a year because I can’t afford to go the doctor. Perspective is everything.

See also John Cole, who wrote of the author of the post above,

That’s Zerlina Maxwell, one of the nicest people I have ever met, who has spent the last week being insulted by people for refusing to fall over into the vapors over the new website and actually explaining how important this new legislation was for her.

This reminds me a bit of those heady days back in 2009, when a certain prominent, upper-income and well-insured progressive blogger and breast cancer survivor was leading the drumbeat to kill the bill. I’m still disgusted.

See also How I became the poster girl for liberal agitprop, Florida Blue CEO Refuses to Play Along with David Gregory’s Concern Trolling and Depends on Where You’re Standing.

7 thoughts on “Easy to Be Hard

  1. Maybe someone can do a study to find out how many people who don’t have insurance have to either wait a long time, or not get through at all, because every Conservative-leaning “news” person, TV and radio host, and every Conservative internet blogger and commenter, is trying to sign or call in, just to complain to everyone how slow the PPACA’s website and phone centers are.

    Maybe they should put an “up-front” message on the internet website, and on the phones, that says:
    “You approximate wait-time is 10 minutes. 10 minutes, because a lot of assholes and dicks who don’t need health insurance are currently tying-up the computers and the phone lines to complain about how long it takes them to get a response from the computers and phone lines.
    Your approximate hold-time is now 9 minutes. 9 minutes, because a lot of assholes and dicks who don’t need health insurance are currently tying-up the computers and the phone lines to complain about how long it takes them to get a response from the computers and phone lines.
    Your approximate hold-time is now 8 minutes. 8 minutes, because…

  2. From the perspective of someone who worked a good 20 years before computers were a part of my working life, I find all this fuss a bit confusing. During the 15 years that I worked with computers, I never (never is an absolute that i try not to use; but, it is appropriate in this instance) saw a software installation that EVER went according to schedule and as planned. It used to irritate me greatly (being a perfectionist; but, I finally accepted that the generation of people in charge (much younger than I) just did not have a sense about how long it would take or even if the new installation would be bug free. After about the first three installations that took forever and then seemingly took forever to get the bugs worked out, I just gave up on any expectations that software installation was anything that could be predicted any easier than the weather. The ACA computer problems seem normal to me. But, the complaints seem normal, too. However, it does annoy me that the press (liberal and conservative) is making a bigger deal out this than it should be.

  3. “However, it does annoy me that the press (liberal and conservative) is making a bigger deal out this than it should be”

    It’s all they got, either ACA website or Benganzi!!!

  4. It seems to me that part of the intensity of the criticism stems from their intense predisposition to false equivalence. During the shutdown, most of the media had to, finally, acknowledge that it really was one side’s fault, and that felt very uncomfortable to them. So, having had to spend time focused on how badly the GOP screwed up, now their instinct is to balance it by focusing really hard on how the administration screwed up. They aren’t comparable, and the details are different, but at least on a subconscious level they just ‘feel’ better if they make the Obamacare rollout a Big Screwup.

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