Chutzpah

-- by Dave

If you have a TV in Washington state right now, your set is being inundated with commercials opposing Referendum 67, an attempt to force insurance companies to live up to the contracts they make people sign. A few of these are pro-R-67 (and are in fact effective and touching), but the ones that are really flooding the screen are all opposed (and for some reason, the videos aren't available on the Web).

Mostly they feature actors in suburban homes or in one case a local diner, all pretending to be average Joes talking about how R-67 is going to cost them soooo much money and how it'll hurt them and their livelihoods. But there's one phrase that keeps popping up in all of them: "self-serving" is how they describe the referendum, since ostensibly it's all the work of eeeevil trial lawyers (one commercial showed a bunch of them -- from the firm Sooem Settle and Kashin -- all rubbing their hands in glee at the thought of how much they could make).

"Self-serving?" It's a common phrase throughout the "Reject R-67" campaign literature. Their spokespeople like to get it into news stories, too.

"Self-serving?"

Well, sure, trial attorneys are going to benefit from the law. But so will most of the public, even those inclined to whine about increased premiums.

The only people who really won't benefit from it are insurers. Which would explain why they've poured in over $8 million to the "Reject R-67" campaign. (See the Anderson Cooper report at the top for more.) That would make its ad campaigns the precise definition of "self serving."

Good ol' right-wing projection. No doubt we keep witnessing it because it's such an effective strategy.