They find a survivor in the rubble. She has horrible injuries but she's alive which is the important thing. It's a miracle​! Every media outlet wants to snag an interview with the survivor so they can focus on the miracle and focus less on the likely corruption that helped bring down the building. Everybody wants happy news!

The media is super excited and the word "miracle" is repeated 10,000 times. A few days later she's conscious and she's able to talk to an MNSBC reporter. During the live interview she says: "I wish I had medical insurance. I'm alive but I might as well be dead. I can't afford any of this..." The reporter is shocked. She's gone entirely off-script. He stammers a bit and he says she'll "get help".

She says "Get help? Why doesn't this country have Medicare for All?" The reporter struggles. This was supposed to be a easy-peasy miracle segment. What the fuck is this policy shit! MSNBC quickly cuts to commercials. "Philanthropist" dirty-rich people decide not to help her because she's not the right fit. She doesn't actually "get help" from them.

She appears on outlets like Democracy Now! In a frank tone she talks about her physical condition, her financial worries, m4a, and her GoFundMe. The mainstream media pretends she doesn't even exist. Biden's in a tough spot. He only wants to talk about the happy miracle.

Biden has hot mic moment when he's venting to his aides: "The Medicare for All Lady is a pain in my ass! Pardon my French."

When he's asked about m4a - he immediately and crudely parrots out canned responses: "Obamacare is gonna be improved. It's gonna be improved and be better and yada-yada-fucking-yada..." The media also asks Jen Psaki questions about m4a in a few press briefings. She makes nice sounding bromides to their questions and follow-ups.

Her replies seem spontaneous but are actually very well rehearsed. She's a low-key exceptional actress. That's a big reason Biden picked her for the gig. MNSBC uses nice-sounding clips of the Psaki's Q&A to start their panel discussions on m4a. In a shocker - the panels feel that "Biden has a lot on his plate" and now is not the "right time" for changes to our healthcare system.

    • inshallah2 [none/use name]
      ·
      3 years ago

      It's funny that despite the US being a totally fucked up country - the media needs to insist that we are just going through some kind of rough patch. A year or two after Trump won his election I read some quip by a big brain who said Trump's election win was a "black swan event".

      I don't remember when he said it but I certainly read it after Charlottesville. Its fourth anniversary will be next month. At any time night-or-day we could have another right-wing terror attack worse than Charlottesville. Black swan my ass.

      I tried to keep the story short as possible but I love telling jokes. I often need to remove humor. But I just had to have Biden call her the "Medicare for All Lady". And then when I added "Pardon my French" - I really had to have it. I can hear him saying that in my head.

  • Dbumba [none/use name]
    ·
    3 years ago

    I disagree, the way this miracle plays out to avoid the whole discourse is this:

    Preemptively a GoFundMe is set up, news asks for crowd-sources donations. When said victim gets flooded with tons of sympathy bucks, the story is spun to uplifting news fodder. Wow look at all these people who helped, Americans helping Americans, no follow up needed, no discussion over public health, we'll leave it up to the marketability of one's story to decide healthcare like a Black Mirror episode.

    During a worldwide pandemic that literally shut down the world, you couldn't have asked for a more perfect opportunity to address the American healthcare problem. Instead, healthcare was literally a non issue in the presidential election, considered too extreme for either democrat or republican candidate of 2020.

    Now that things are "back to normal" there's especially no need to ever address healthcare; people are too busy getting pissed that getting Subway or Dunkin takes three times as long because no one wants to work for poverty wages anymore.

    Even better, since everyone went all-in on covid, when there is a new deadlier pandemic, no one will take it seriously.

    • inshallah2 [none/use name]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Preemptively a GoFundMe is set up

      That's another possibility.

      During a worldwide pandemic

      I've thought about this tweet since I first saw it mentioned in the CTH sub...

      Joe Kennedy III (@joekennedy)

      Not a single patient should be forced to fight off medical bankruptcy in the midst of a global health pandemic without a lawyer by their side.

      May 8, 2020

      Link

      He had follow-up tweets "clarifying" what he meant. I guess he convinced all the libs that he isn't a fucking ghoul.

      people are too busy getting pissed that getting Subway or Dunkin takes three times as long

      Healthcare? Where's my fucking sandwich?

      when there is a new deadlier pandemic, no one will take it seriously.

      And the next pandemic could make covid seem mild. Imagine if the melting permafrost exposes a smallpox-like virus that most recently infected human beings ~10,000 years ago. The virus killed off a few thousand people because the disease was highly localized. The virus couldn't hitch a ride on planes, trains, and cars. But this time - globalization spreads it all over the globe before experts even know what it is. Maybe vaccines take many years to be developed and they have serious (or deadly) side effects. God only knows what the global death toll will be.