Hype, Blame, and "Julia"

Via Jim Geraghty, here's an RNC ad that anyone with a functioning truth receptor in his brain will find effective. Unfortunately, that leaves a lot of people out, and some of them vote.



I heard a guy on Hannity yesterday trying to defend Obama's record. He couldn't come up with a single specific thing Obama has done to improve anything. At one point the poor schmuck resorted to "He's making a brighter future for America." Reality-based arguments can't break through the kind of barriers some people have erected in their minds. Facts, reason, and even one's own deteriorating personal circumstances will barely make a dent.

And then there are the people who positively crave the "security" of giant, smothering government. Barack Obama knows they're out there. If you missed the explosion of conservative reaction to Candidate Obama's Colorforms story of cradle-to-grave dependency, here are a few excerpts to catch you up on the "Life of Julia":

Naked DC:

Frequent attempts by conservatives to put the works of great libertarian thinkers into an accessible medium have resulted in Atlas Shrugged being filmed using three cameras and a cast of people they found in a Wendy’s. But leave it to Barack Obama to unintentionally explain to America what life is like when you’re entirely dependent on government welfare with a twee cartoon that is designed to simultaneously terrify women, young people and the elderly into believing Mitt Romney’s plan for America involves dropping them off at the edge of the Grand Canyon and explaining that everyone with a problem is required to jump.

David Harsanyi: Who the hell is "Julia," and why am I paying for her whole life?

Let's, for the purposes of this post, set aside the misleading generalizations regarding policy in the ad (no one is innocent on that account, obviously). What we are left with is a celebration of a how a woman can live her entire life by leaning on government intervention, dependency and other people's money rather than her own initiative or hard work. It is, I'd say, implicitly un-American, in the sense that it celebrates a mindset we have -- outwardly, at least -- shunned.

It is also a mindset that women should find offensively patronizing. When they're old enough, I hope my two daughters will find the notion that their success hinges on the president's views on college-loan interest rates preposterous. Yet, according to the "Life of Julia," women are helpless without the guiding hand of Barack Obama.

Julia can enroll in a Head Start program to help get her ready for school. Because of steps President Obama has taken to improve the program …  Julia can take the SATs because she was trained by the useless “Race to the Top” program, yes, implemented by President Obama …  During college, Julia undergoes surgery, which is thankfully covered by her insurance due to parents' coverage until she turns 26 … thanks to Obama.

Julia works as a full-time web designer, and thanks to Obamacare, her health insurance is required to cover birth control and preventive care, "letting Julia focus on her work rather than worry about her health..."

...because children are bad for your health, obviously.

And so on and so forth.

James Taranto: The Lonely Life of Julia

The most shocking bit of the Obama story is that Julia apparently never marries. She simply "decides" to have a baby, and Obama uses other people's money to help her take care of it. Julia doesn't appear to be poor; at various points the story refers to her glamorous career as a Web designer, and it makes no mention of her benefiting from poverty programs like Medicaid or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

In 1999 Lionel Tiger coined the word "bureaugamy" to refer to the relationship between officially impoverished mothers of illegitimate children and the government. "The Life of Julia" is an insidious attack on the institution of the family, an endorsement of bureaugamy even for middle-class women.

Ed Morrissey takes a more realistic view of Julia’s life:

3 years old – Julia gets a new-and-improved Head Start, which a new HHS study shows won’t do anything for her anyway.

17 years old – Race to the Top improves Julia’s SAT scores. Is there any evidence at all to support that argument? Even so, she’s down the list from all of the home-schooled children and the charter- and private-school students who actually got an education rather than an NEA indoctrination. However, thanks to the NEA indoctrination, Julia is now better prepared for a life on the government dole.

18 years old – Julia’s family qualifies for a $10,000 tuition tax credit spread out over four years, while Obama’s student-loan subsidies drive tuition costs up even faster.

22 years old – Julia undergoes surgery, which has to be funded by her parents’ employers despite Julia being an adult, and which will be most likely delayed as providers decline in number thanks to the economics of ObamaCare.

23 years old — Thanks to the Lily Ledbetter Act, trial attorneys get rich by filing lawsuits against employers that otherwise wouldn’t have been brought, leaving fewer resources to hire Julia. No college job for our intrepid Julia!

25 years old – Julia finally gets her 4-year degree in seven years, thanks to the inability to handle the tuition bubble and the lack of work. However, the good news is that the $200,000 in student loans will only hang over her head for 20 years, while taxpayers like Julia end up paying for the costs of default.

And so on. Along the same lines, only grimmer, Kevin Williamson:

Alas, Team Obama has omitted a few milestones from the life of Julia:

4 months: Julia’s mother decides that giving birth will be hard on her figure. She kills Julia. Under Barack Obama, her right to do so is absolutely nonnegotiable.

10 years: Trapped in a failing and dangerous public school, Julia (another Julia, not the dead one) is terrified and miserable. Under the Obama administration, protecting the government education monopoly from competition and accountability is almost as sacrosanct as abortion. School-choice programs are severely constrained or eliminated. Julia falls behind. [. . .]

23 years: Being a bartender, Julia works late at night. Under Obama, the federal government supports laws that make it difficult or impossible for a private citizen to own a gun in many places. Leaving her bar one night, the defenseless Julia is killed in the street. Ironically, the gun used to kill her was sold to a Mexican drug cartel under a program run by President Obama’s Department of Justice.

Read the rest.

Michelle Malkin:

Notice, by the way, how “progressive” women are awfully quiet about the patriarchal hegemony symbolized by Obama’s faceless, dependent Julia. Cue the crickets: Chirp, chirp, chirp. [. . .]

After hyperventilating for months about the Republican “war on women,” Democratic new-media gurus inadvertently have exposed the real Barack Obama: a chauvinistic control freak who would tether every last woman and child to his ever-expanding, budget-busting Nanny State.

Mamas, for the sake of your family’s freedom and our republic’s survival, don’t let your babies grow up to be “Julia.”

Barack Obama has said that entitlement programs have made America a great country. Let's hope a majority of voters don't agree with him.

Many thanks to Michelle Malkin for the link.
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