Big-time ad exec (and Obama supporter, evidently) Jeff Goodby—whose work you know well—is not a fan of the Pajama Boy ad campaign which you see being spoofed here as well as everywhere else.

No, it isn’t because the ad parodies itself in your imagination the second you look at it—honestly, we will probably have all the Gormogons and support staff appearing over time ‘cuz this shit writes itself—but for very interesting and technical reasons.

The ad, he says, fails to elicit an action. Basically, the ad sits there on the couch, drinking hot chocolate. There is no reference to a product or service (only barackobama.com, which is nothing to do with healthcare), and the ad seems to ridicule the target audience:

He looks like a guy who doesn’t have his act together….We want people to sign up for health care who do have their act together and this guy doesn’t look like he does. It’s not a compliment.

Compliment? To whom?

There’s a problem in advertising in general — show the target audience in the ad instead of actually understanding the target audience and saying something that would be meaningful to them….In this case, you show them in a way that’s a little bit cynical. As in, ‘Hey, these guys are all slackers.’ It’s not a very becoming way to talk about them.

Agreed. The ad is so fundamentally dumb it invites far more mockery than it will invite response. In other words, this ad is almost scientifically engineered to make people ridicule it.

Um, and indeed, that’s what they were planning all along, you see. In fact, you know what? You’re supposed to hate this ad.

“Don’t be this guy sitting around in his pajamas,” a Democratic official [said] of the message, who requested anonymity to talk freely. “Have a conversation, and get health care. And it’s poking fun at that” idea of doing nothing.

The official added that this is a way to try and reach a demographic that can be “hard to break through” with.

You know what’s a really tough sell with Millennials? Insulting their intelligence by (a) showing them an ad that portrays them as onesie-wearing doofuses and then (b) suddenly claim that you’re on their side because you heard the backlash was so bad.

There are some very plausible theories out there that the entire healthcare rollout was supposed to be a disaster so that a revamp of the system would get people to accept single-payer. However, the reality is that the Democrats are so fundamentally ignorant of health insurance, medicine, business, and advertising that the disaster even caught them by surprise. And rather than open the door to single-payer, it will instead open the door to a Republican takeover of the Senate and, now quite possibly, the Presidency.

People got talking all right: about the end of liberal dominance.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.