Obama’s ACA apology

I chose the topic of apologia within the context of the ACA. The artifacts I chose were comments to media coverage of the Obama apology speech to those persons who lost their health insurance and for the website snafu.

Apparently the President made certain promises that persons who have health care plans they like, would not lose them under the Affordable Care Act (ACA, Obamacare). As it turns out there were so many people who lost their health insurance that the President found it necessary to make a speech to apologize to them.

For example, even though it is my ex-wife’s legal obligation, according to a court order, to provide health insurance for our children, she can no longer get insurance for them because they do not live with her.

Also, the ACA contains a deadline to make the application before a tax penalty takes effect. A website or web network was established in order to accept the applications of some 114million plus households and 27 million businesses in the U.S. The website had crashes and other serious problems leaving millions unable to apply for health care. So the net effect of the ACA appears to be that currently less people have health care than before its enactment. These website problems were also a subject of Obama’s apology.

In doing my research for this blog, I wanted to get a well-rounded set of opinions. So I tried to find both pro-Obama (pro-ACA) and anti-Obama (anti-ACA) articles with reader comments. I think I heard the little voice inside my head say “Good luck with that”.

The majority of the comments I found, from both pro and con, are negative. I’m not sure if that means that conservatives are reading and commenting on liberal sites or if many of the liberals are now angry with Obama too. 

A third possibility is that the Foxfire has me pegged as a conservative and is frontloading all the conservative comments.

I am really a very middle of the road moderate. I’m not sure whether I’m the most conservative liberal or the most liberal conservative that I know. I guess that depends on whether I am living in California or Utah at the time I make the assessment.

Which side I lean toward often depends on the topic. On the liberal side of the fence I believe that drug laws have caused more damage in America than drugs ever thought about and therefore ought to done away with. And on the other side, I think every citizen has a duty to own a gun and be fully qualified to use it.

Those are just examples, but let’s get back on track.

This morning I decided to revisit the articles to see if anything is new and I found changes in the comments section that require me to rewrite my blog. It appears that the news organizations have editors who work through the comments eliminating the distasteful ones. However, at the time I wrote the original (for the material that was in the comment section at the time) my comments were valid. So rather than throw them out I will lead the blog with them. Then I will follow up with the new data and comment on this phenomenon.

With the exception of a few comical remarks most of the comments on the different pages lacked substance. The educational value of the data vomited onto the various blog threads was minimal, while mudslinging and name-calling prevailed. The exceptions to this are mentioned below, notably the Washington Post and Reuters comments.

While there were several good laughs, one interesting thing was the comment posters’ unique names. My favorite was gardyloo, which is what people in England used to holler just before dumping the contents of their chamber pots out the window. That of course was before the advent of indoor plumbing. At least that poster has a sense of humor about the value of what he/she is saying. Ironically, gardyloo is one of the more intelligent sounding commenters.

Posts from a CNN article, The truth about Obamacare began with sarcasm. A head of household (poster) discussed how his family lost their health insurance and now has to pay thousands more per year. But since Obama apologized he feels soo much better. Another poster apologized for voting for Obama. The discussion continued on toward impeachment, with one poster trying to conduct a survey for readers to vote for or against impeachment.

Another post labeled “The truth about Obamacare” was a response seemingly from a CNN reporter or it may have been copied and pasted from the CNNreporter’s article with an example using a case where some person could have got a better deal from the California exchange and detailing how the ACA plan was better.

The response to that began with a poster stating, “You have just stated the same reasoning as most German's did during the 1930's”. From there, the replying posts moved to Hitler and then to comparing Obama to Hitler.

In a failed attempt to get a less biased outside perspective, I consulted a source I have trusted in the past, The Manchester Guardian. I found an article, Republicans attack president's 'phoney apology' over Obamacare rollout .

My trust of the Guardian is not based on their political leanings or because I consider them unbiased, rather because I have, in the past, seen them both attack and defend President Bush, depending the topic rather than the politics of the individual. 

The Manchester Guardian’s article seemed neutral enough in context of the reporter’s own words, but the comments lacked that neutrality. 

An interesting comment from a poster “Someone really needs to tell you Tea Partiers that anything slightly left of Mussolini, is not by definition ‘socialism’” reflects the overall mood of the left slant. Of course there was opposing banter, which included “The yank-neoliberals say that this is the careerist/corporatist baby-killer in chief's ‘signature legislative accomplishment’”.

From there, as often happens, the banter sidetracked off onto a tangent that has nothing to do with Obamacare or apologies. “Does one really need a smartphone to feed a parking meter”? I thought this topic was interesting from the context of our class discussions on uses for technological advances. However the topic really didn’t develop much beyond the examples that follow the next paragraph.

From these sources, it appears that rather than citizen journalism, this process of posting comments seems to be a forum for bored, contentious people who are more concerned with vomiting their opinion in a most obnoxious way, rather than taking time to examine the facts and determine if their opinions actually possess any validity.

For example one poster (referring to the use of smart phones to pay parking meters) states, “If making simple social transactions is to depend on expensive technology not everybody owns, or which may have broken, or run out of credit, or simply been left at home, this is an obvious step backwards, designed to suit the supplier, not the consumer.”

To demonstrate that poster’s lack of checking the facts another poster replies, “The meters in question have a slot for coins as well as the facility for paying.”

Other examples include the use of personal affronts rather than replies that concern facts or data or the relating of any information that might even attempt to resolve the issue.

A poster’s answer to one statement was, “Aren't these Republicans awful, stupid people? Are the members of a modern human race?” (note the misspelling of the word “they” or “thee” whichever was intended) To which the response was “Are you even part of the human race? You awful, stupid person.”

I guess the issue is that many of those who have time to surf through the myriad of comments lack actual research skills so they are unable to obtain facts; or are too lazy to spend the energy it takes to discover the facts from both sides. Is that because it is more important to continually verbalize knee jerk reactions than to form an opinion that might give birth to an intelligent reaction? 

The impact all this banter has on Obama’s apology (or any other topic that journalists are discussing) is that it severely impedes the readers’ ability to find intelligent reactions to the topic. There is no way to know if all the time you are spending reading the comments will net any worthwhile piece of information.

It is sort of like catching your dog swallowing a piece of jewelry, but you’re not sure whether Fido got the bubble gum machine ring or the gold one with a fat diamond. You have to decide if the jewelry is actually worth digging thru the crap to retrieve it. You have to search through all the grossen scheisen without knowing whether the object you are seeking actually has any value.

Other posts from the Washington Post President Obama’s fumbling apology press conference, translated blog talked about the quality of his speech. Here the story itself was more ludicrous than the posts.

One poster, Mado-Toronto, stated, “not the kind of speech on would expect of a Harvard educated person” (copied verbatim) note the misspelling of the word “one” which really took the wind out of Mado’s sails as far as I’m concerned.

Revisiting the Washington Post’s story revealed some interesting comments. While there was still a tendency to get side tracked those posts present are somewhat more intelligent and less adversarial than those from the other sites. They also had an option to select older, newer and most popular posts.

As of this writing there are only 26 Washington Post comments. I am not sure if that means that someone in that news organization went through deleting the negative, intolerant, inappropriate & irrelevant posts or if there were not very many Washington Post readers that actually posted comments.

Which ever the case, there appeared to be more citizen journalism among these few posts than in all the comments from the other sources (with the exception of Reuters) I read combined.

Some of the comments represented successful citizen journalism because they contributed to dialogue about possible solutions or offered comments aimed at promoting thoughtful consideration by the reader.

For example there was a question about why was the website the only way to sign up. The poster stated that call centers should be offered as an additional solution. He/she also recommended being sure to cook your turkey properly if your health insurance was dropped.

The satirical turkey comment represents several posts that provide humorous relief to the readers’ lament over the misfortune caused by the event. Throughout history satire was used to soften the blow of frustrations caused by laws and decrees handed down by less than scrupulous leaders. Satire can be good journalism.

To be useful, citizen journalism should get the reader to think and ponder rather than simply to react. Not that reaction is in and of itself bad. If the response is thought based rather than blind reaction, it can contribute in some way to the overall solution.

Reuters story Obama’sapology (of sorts) for his “keep your plan” promise contained 16 posts that were thought provoking. Included was a discussion of how a one payer system would be more efficient but “smacks of ‘socialism,’ i.e. ‘communism,’ to those for whom those words strike fear and trembling – and an almost complete lack of ability to think. Brain freeze.” Here the comment began with a logical idea but quickly digressed into degrading the opposition. Which is, perhaps, one way in which citizen journalism is differentiated from the professionals.

Another insightful comment from Reuters was, “Perhaps the only solution is to educate the electorate to look beyond the sound-bites, the rhetoric etc.; and to train a civil service of bureaucrats that understands how to help the politicians write better laws.”

National Public Radio’s site has an article titled These Californians Greeted Canceled HealthPlans With Smiles (thanks Eric) that discusses people who were glad their policies were cancelled. A self-employed writer was stuck in a bad plan because of a preexisting condition. Other people found they could get better plans.

The comments discussion begins with an interesting testimonial that was good because it recaps the article in a concise abstract. The discussion quickly moves to warm banter about Canada’s health care system. For the most part these posters maintained a healthy discussion paralleling taxes in Canada to health insurance premiums in America. The discussion broadens the knowledge base of the reader, which I believe is good citizen journalism.

There were digressions, unfortunately with a poster comparing Republicans to Nazis. The same poster said that “50 million Americans will go hungry this Thanksgiving”. Not sure where those figures came from but another poster called him/her “a bald faced liar”.

Another poster asked if there are similar stories (to those in the article) from other states.

In spite of some apparently emotional deviation, there was a lot of insightful discussion that paralleled some of the Reuters commentators in journalistic quality, if not necessarily in majority point of view.  

It appears that most of the larger news outlets that allow comments to their web stories are reviewing the comments and editing out those useless and/or derogatory comments. If my memory serves me correctly the CNN site had an excess of 4000 comments when I first reviewed it. On the last review there were fewer than 500. I wish I had taken screen shots of all the articles so I could be sure how of which sites are filtering and which ones have good commenters to begin with.

With the use of in house editors the web news sites greatly assist in the transformation of comments into productive citizen journalism by eliminating much the crap I previously mentioned and allowing the reader to sort through comments that are worthwhile. My advise to any who wish to read serious material is to wait a few days for the editor(s) to filter out the crap.

In deference to e's objections, I removed the purely speculative portion of my blog.