{"id":583,"date":"2004-02-04T19:39:20","date_gmt":"2004-02-05T00:39:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2004\/02\/brainwashing\/"},"modified":"2004-02-04T19:39:20","modified_gmt":"2004-02-05T00:39:20","slug":"brainwashing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/02\/brainwashing\/","title":{"rendered":"Brainwashing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was reading about the Bush administration&#8217;s new campaign to promote Medicare reform.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.americanprogress.org\/site\/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&#038;b=6228\">This part<\/a> sounded so crazy that I dialed the number to verify it&#8217;s true:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><u>THE AD&#8217;S DISTORTIONS:<\/u> The new Medicare ads urge citizens to call 1-800-MEDICARE to hear more about the new law. And in &#8220;Big Brother&#8221; style, when you call that number you have to actually say out loud &#8220;Medicare improvement&#8221; in order to get information.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That&#8217;s right.  You&#8217;re literally instructed to say &#8220;Medicare improvement&#8221; to find out about changes in the law.<br \/>\nGovernment propaganda in action.<br \/>\nIncidentally, the media company purchasing these &#8220;informational&#8221; Medicare ads (at taxpayer expense) just happens to be a company that&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/uslatest\/story\/0,1282,-3709683,00.html\">working for President Bush&#8217;s re-election campaign<\/a>.  Small world, isn&#8217;t it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/02\/brainwashing\/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permalink to Brainwashing\"><p>I was reading about the Bush administration&#8217;s new campaign to promote Medicare reform. This part sounded so crazy that I dialed the number to verify it&#8217;s true: THE AD&#8217;S DISTORTIONS: The new Medicare ads urge citizens to call 1-800-MEDICARE to hear more about the new law. And in &#8220;Big Brother&#8221; style, when you call that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-583","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}