Say hi to Connie Bowman. Connie is an actress from Maryland who specializes in television and radio ad work. She also has a handful of film credits. She has her own website, conniebowman.com, where you can listen to some of her past voiceover work as well as contact her if you are interested in hiring her. She even lists some of her clients. There is a whole array of well-know companies and government agencies. However, one client that isn’t listed, probably due to them just hiring her, is Americans for Prosperity, the SuperPAC funded by the Koch Bros.
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Now, this isn’t a condemnation of Ms. Bowman taking Koch money to appear in one of their ads. As an actress, she is paid to perform, and will likely take the parts wherever they come. Whether or not she agrees ideologically with those who are paying her is beside the point. She is not the real story here. The real story is that Americans for Prosperity started running an ad in Alaska this week targeting Democratic Senator Mark Begich and his support for the ACA. Below is the ad:
As you can see, the ad implies heavily that the woman is an actual resident of Alaska and a constituent of Begich’s. Of course, we now know this to be a complete lie, as she is a paid actress who resides in Maryland. But does this bother the people running Americans for Prosperity one bit? I don’t think so. After Begich complained that this was the case of outsiders using misleading tactics to attack him, a spokeswoman for the group, Heidi Gay, responded with this little nugget:
While Senator Begich is focused on the residence of an actress in a TV ad, thousands of Alaskans have lost their health care plans despite promises from Senator Begich to the contrary. Alaskans deserve an answer about why he would continue to doggedly support a law that is leading to less choice, higher premiums, and more bureaucracy.”
Nice. Notice how quickly she shifted to the usual knee-jerk, Tea Party response when it comes to Obamacare. Let’s not talk about us being dishonest and deceptive. Instead, let’s keep talking about what we want to talk about, which is how much we need to tell people to hate the health care law. Sure, we need to be mendacious with the way we are telling you this information. But, it is all for the greater good here, because Obama.
The thing is, if there are thousands of people getting hurt by the health care law in Alaska, why didn’t AFP just put one of those people in the commercial? Why not run a a real resident of Alaska’s Obamacare horror story so that the rest of the voters in the state can see what’s in store for them? The reason why they won’t do it is because they can’t. Sure, they might find someone who says they received a cancellation notice or who states that they are forced to pay higher premiums now.
However, running the person’s story would just allow it to be subjected to scrutiny. Someone could easily fact-check the person’s story, much like the industrious journalist Eric Stern did when Sean Hannity tried to run out some ‘ordinary Americans’ who are suffering because of Obamacare. Anymore, it is best to deal with generalities. Or just out and out lies. Whatever works.
Justin Baragona is the Managing Editor at Politicus Sports as well as Senior Editor at PoliticusUSA. He was a political writer for 411Mania.com before joining PoliticusUSA. Politically, Justin considers himself a liberal but also a realist and pragmatist. Currently, Justin lives in St. Louis, MO and is married. Besides writing, he also runs his own business after spending a number of years in the corporate world. You can follow Justin on Twitter either with his personal handle (@justinbaragona) or the Sports site’s (@PoliticusSports).
