Sunday, December 11, 2011
Divide and Conquer, the Verizon Way
A pair of upscale breeders cruise through their upscale neighborhood, quietly pretending to have concern for one of their formerly upscale neighbors, who are about to fall from the top branches into the Let's Pretend It Isn't There land of How the Other Half Lives.
Some of their "friends," you see, are on the verge of losing their house. "So many bills" mutters Hubby to Obviously Pregnant But Keeps Touching Stomach and Don't Worry There Will Be a Reference To Future Child Just To Make Sure You Get It Later. Mommy First/ Wife Later replies something about how Verizon is now going to require that she pay a little bit toward her insurance. Seems like an innocent, "hey I want to be part of this conversation too" thing to say, except...
Fox News Viewer and Sean Hannity Worshiper Hubby instantly jumps down her throat with a line that I think I've seen misspelled on a sign at every Tea Party event ever held. It boils down to "shut up, it's still a good deal, and hey we are a million times better off than our friends" and strongly implies that the reason why those friends are about to be homeless is because one of them objected to contributing to their own insurance. In other words, were whiny, demanding, entitled losers who simply failed to appreciate their jobs and their Godlike employers- you know, the Most Productive Amongst Us.
Hubby's "shut your mouth you never know who may be listening" admonition does it's job- Mommy/Wife not only regrets her half-uttered criticism of All Good And All Giving Verizon, she quickly puts on a smile and folds herself back into focusing on Baby To Be and Former Baby in the Back of the Minivan Made Possible By Verizon. It's strongly implied that the mildly anti-Corporate afterthought throwaway line has been tossed down the Memory Hole, never to be retrieved and certainly never to be spoken of again.
One of the YouTube commentators gets it exactly right here- this commercial is all about dividing Verizon's worker drones into opposing tribes. Yes, Verizon is demanding that it's employees (who, by the way, might want to notice that unemployment rate and remember how much they like living in a house and how much it costs to feed kids these days before they start to bitch) pay "a little" into their insurance funds, which had formerly (probably due to some silly "contract agreement") been paid in full by Verizon. Maybe some employees have a problem with this. Verizon would just like to remind them that hey, jobs are hard to come by these days, and maybe they'd rather have no job at all and be out on the street? Would that be better? Hey, it's up to them. But complaining about it- well, hey, it would be a real shame if the company shut down because it wasn't profitable enough after paying out for all that insurance. If that happens, you know who to blame (wink, nudge, point at noisy, greedy, selfish, lazy neighbor.) Go ahead and kill that golden goose- but don't blame the goose when you don't find any eggs in there when you are done.
You can almost HEAR the whip cracking, can't you?
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that was a good video. I loved it. thanks for sharing. Keep posting.
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Great. No wonder network television is dying; all we get are ads for Head-On and corporate propaganda so blatant, it would give Stalin the night sweats.
ReplyDeleteI believe it was Horace Greeley who once said that, if it becomes necessary, the rich can always hire half of the poor to kill the other half.
ReplyDeleteThis makes me harken back to the good ol' days. Back in 1995, the husband was honorably discharged after serving eight and a half years in the Army. He got a job right away and we were set. We bought a house with the bonus he received for taking his discharge six months early. His new job (over-the-road trucker for a major trucking company) came with health benefits. Good benefits. Almost as good as we had while he was in the Army.
ReplyDeleteSix months later, he suffered a massive stroke while actually on the job. Literally, carrying boxes from the back of the semi trailer into a warehouse. He was twenty-eight.
Fast-forward a year and the medical bills and insurance caps combined with the fact a housewife of eight years can't get a job aside from part-time janitor, we lost our house. We had to leave our beautiful home in Savannah, Georgia and ended up in Wisconsin where I was able to get a job for $5.25 an hour (a full dollar more than minimum wage at the time).
And we had good benefits.
Brain Kilmeade would ask why you didn't just start your own business, like an ambitious American who didn't expect handouts would have.
ReplyDeleteW. T. F. That's disgustingly smug and self-congratulatory. "Sucks to be them, but us, we have it made. Aren't we lucky?" *throws up a little in her mouth* And, geez, having actually *gasphorror* pay some for your health insurance! What hardship, having to now do what millions have done for decades. *twitchtwitchtwitch* I work with a woman who's sure she has a kidney infection again, but she has no health insurance, and the last time she was in the hospital for four days with a kidney infection, it was over $9K. On what we make, paying that off ain't easy by a long shot. She's looked into insurance but it wouldn't cover diabetes-related costs for a year and she's diabetic. I'd love to see those smug Verizon asshats deal with that slice of reality.
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