I haven't been able to watch a YouTube video lately without suffering through a political advertisement for Ben Sasse, who's running in the Republican primary, here in Nebraska, for the U.S. Senate. (Yeah, we're the kind of red state where the primary is the big battle, since it's highly unlikely we'd elect any Democrat these days.)
Anyway, the ad promotes Sasse as the kind of candidate I wouldn't support in a million years, but that's not too surprising. However, it ends with, "And he'll stand for our Nebraska values. ... It's time to get Washington, D.C. out of Nebraska."
Guess who's paying for it? Yup, you guessed it. It's an outside group, a Washington, D.C.-based SuperPAC funded by out-of-state corporations and billionaires: FreedomWorks for America. (Yes, the Koch brothers apparently have their fingers in it, too. No surprise there, huh?)
"Our Nebraska values"? Heh, heh. Yeah, right. Of course, the other Republican candidates have their own corporate backers. This is how we've sold our country to the highest bidder.
But the brazenness of this ad is incredible, isn't it? How dumb do they think we are? Well, the sad thing is, they're probably right. We're a solidly red state, after all.
And they certainly don't have to worry about the news media pointing this out - not that I've seen, at least. Again, this is how we're destroying our democracy.
Get Firefox AddBlock and never sit through another add again...
ReplyDeleteI know, M1nks, but I don't like to do that. Without ads, we'd have to pay for YouTube - and the other websites we currently get for free.
DeleteIt's not that I watch the ads, except on the rare occasion it's something that catches my interest right away (usually game or movie trailers, but very rarely even for them). And if I can't click out of them in five seconds, I do something else. I've always got multiple tabs open in my browser, anyway.
I do use NoScript, another add-on for Firefox, and that blocks some ads, too. But I use that for security. Ad-blocking is just a side-effect sometimes (especially for the more annoying ads)..
If ads get particularly obtrusive, there are always other websites. But I like getting free content. Imagine what YouTube would be like if you had to pay to either post or watch videos. Personally, I like the amateur stuff.