To recap: in the premiere episode of his Last Week Tonight, host John Oliver got that rabble-rouser in a red dress Lisa Loeb to “sing a cheerful, quirky, Portland-y song about how the people of Oregon are idiots for dumping almost $250 million into their malfunctioning state website for Obamacare, only to scrap the whole ineffectual thing and pass the buck back to the federal government and its Healthcare.gov site.” Apparently, certain residents of the Beaver State didn’t appreciate being made fun of, and they’re showing their displeasure in the most Northwest Region of the United States possible: by writing a passive aggressive blog post titled “Yes, John Oliver, We Are Stupid F*cking Idiots.”
Well, Mr. Oliver and others are quite right to expose and even parody the costs associated with the portal’s dysfunction. They’re also right to be angry at the damage potentially done to the ACA’s national momentum and to supportive politicians in the upcoming mid-terms. Unfortunately for us, our passionate, hard, honest work will forever be associated with a broken website. So no, that’s not necessarily fair, but it is how the world works.
More importantly, are we, as Mr. Oliver suggests, stupid f*cking idiots?
Yes.
Given the world today, you have to be a stupid f*cking idiot to want to help activate a legislation so controversial.
You have to be a stupid f*cking idiot to suggest a strategy that unites people around a common good before selling them on something as complicated as health insurance.
You have to be a stupid f*cking idiot to think advertising can actually help improve the quality of people’s lives.
But at North, we welcome stupid f*cking idiots. And I’d do it all again just the same, proudly.
Although, next time I’d probably leave the website out of the ads. (Via)
USA Network is kicking themselves for not going with “We Welcome Stupid F*cking Idiots” when they had the chance. Anyway, Mr. Oregon needs to chill, sip some wine, and listen to Lisa Loeb.
Don’t you feel better already?
