Healthcare Hullabaloo: Yogi Berra

Who doesn’t love Yogi Berra – all time baseball great and part time philosopher? As a boy, I practically grew up in his bowling alley, which he owned in partnership with fellow Yankee great Phil ‘the Scooter’ Rizzuto.

Yogi became well know for his Yogi-isms – little philosophical pearls of wisdom and sayings that, at first take, don’t seem to make much sense. However, after you think about them for a while, they start to make a lot of sense.

Some of my favorites include:

"90% of the game is half mental."

“95% of short putts don’t go in”

"Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded"

“Pair up in threes”

"It ain't over till it's over."

"When you come to a fork in the road, take it."

"Thank you for making this day necessary."[

"You can observe a lot by watching."

"I really didn't say everything I said"

…and my all-time favorite:

"It's déjà vu all over again"

Yesterday, I actually experienced déjà vu all over again. I just happened to catch a news report on regarding comments made by Rep. Steve Cohen (Dem-Tennessee) Rep. Cohen pointed out that, when talking about National Healthcare, Republicans used the same Spin Doctoring techniques that the Nazis used. According to Cohen “They say it's a government takeover of health care, a big lie just like Goebbels. You say it enough, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie and eventually, people believe it. Like blood libel. That's the same kind of thing. The Germans said enough about the Jews and the people believed it and you had the Holocaust. You tell a lie over and over again. And we've heard on this floor, government takeover of health care.”

In cased you missed it, you can watch it here:

http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/politics/2011/01/19/ac.kth.cohen.gop.nazis.cnn.html

Republicans are now criticizing Cohen for “calling them Nazis”. In truth, it seems that Rep. Cohen was just pointing out how our representatives manipulate public opinion by using the same propaganda techniques that were employed by the Nazi Party. And, for the record, the conservatives don’t have an exclusive on these techniques – I have seen both parties use them with equal regularity and effect.

The thing that really struck me was that Rep. Cohen’s speech seemed to be taken, in some parts, almost word for word, from one of my earlier blogs. In case you missed it, here’s where you can read it for yourself:

http://healthcarehullabalo.blogspot.com/2010/02/spin-doctors-part-3.html

Ok, I think that the likelihood is very small that Rep. Cohen or one of his speech writers lifted material for that speech from my blog. However, it was reassuring that I’m not the only person who sees how public opinion is being manipulated by Spin Doctors. I would bet that the reason why his fellow Congressmen and Congresswomen are so upset with Rep. Cohen is that he let the cat out of the bag about Spin Doctoring. You see, once the public recognizes the tools that are used to sway their opinion, those tools lose their effectiveness.

Rep. Cohen is relatively new to Congress, having only served the last four years. Maybe this whole speech was a rookie mistake. F*cking newbies – you’d think that they would read the FAQ section before they accidentally go and blow it for everyone!

As you might guess, I have very strong feelings about the art of Spin Doctoring. I think that everyone should be aware of this technique so that they can start seeing through it. In fact, here are my three posts on this subject to date:

http://healthcarehullabalo.blogspot.com/2010/02/spin-doctors.html

http://healthcarehullabalo.blogspot.com/2010/02/spin-doctors-part-two-term-spin-doctor.html

http://healthcarehullabalo.blogspot.com/2010/02/spin-doctors-part-3.html

The bottom line here – as I’ve said before – is that we have to start cutting through the smokescreens and the BS and identify the real issues if we have any hope of making significant progress in the whole health care issue. Therefore, I’m thankful that Rep. Cohen for making the American public aware of how they are being manipulated by the professional propagandists.

But let’s get something clear right now. In my opinion, the Spin Doctors who use their skills to mis-lead the American public and promote the agenda of those who wish to continue bilking Americans out of Billions of dollars each year aren’t Nazis.

I think that the term “traitors” is a much more accurate description for these scum.

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