Bizarre Richard Simmons Commercial Performance for Obamacare in California

January 17th, 2014 9:03 PM

So you think the Brosurance and the Pajama Boy ads for Obamacare were pretty weird? Well, to paraphrase Al Jolson, you ain't seen nothing yet!

And what you haven't seen yet is a surreal danceoff performance between Richard Simmons and a contortionist during a six hour Obamacare infomercial produced by Covered California. They were supposed to inspire young people to sign up but mostly what they did was to generate a lot of laughter...along with a bunch of dropped jaws. Perhaps "surreal" doesn't adequately describe this video (and below the fold) since it is more like a laughable rip in the space/time continuum.

 

If you think that there is no way this performance would inspire young people to actually sign up to "get covered," the RedAlertPolitics blog agrees with you in this scathing review:

I’m either on drugs, or the administration is this helplessly stupid. The Tell a Friend — Get Covered campaign, better described as “a tourist trap off Route 66,” began a six-hour live-streamed event Thursday afternoon that was advertised to “include stories, tips, helpful information and other details related to national health care options.” Really, it was as if the audio-visual club got wasted on malt liquor and hijacked public access television.

Get Covered, a partnership among state healthcare exchanges and the Obamacare missionary Enroll America, expertly fails to cater to young people. Its circus began Thursday with a dance-off between Richard Simmons and the contortionist Nathan Barnatt, overseen by the star of an Internet show whose premise is “drunk cooking.” How this is supposed to entice a 27 year old to pay $200 a month for health insurance, or even talk about it, is a question for the gods.

If you want to waste 6 hours of your life, you can watch the entire infomercial here. It is deadly dull except for a couple of highlights, or rather, lowlights. At the 1:41 mark is a poorly performed Obamacare rap song and at 1:56 is a contest to beat the world record in the number of band-aids pasted to a face in one minute. I don't know if it will make the Guiness Book of World Records but that Richard Simmons danceoff routine should certainly win a record of some sort.