In late August, a post showed up on the satire news website “Empire News.” The post claimed that Congress had approved a bill which would not only give those on welfare a car, but also give these individuals a $100 gas card to use at popular gas chains. Thus, the idea of ObamaCars was born.
Political websites, twitter pages and even people on Facebook took the post as hard fact and began to spread the word. There was rejoicing and outrage. Arguments were made from both sides of the political spectrum, but in the end, the bill was just not real, and all the bickering it created was just another fun thing for people to speculate.
In truth, the Empire News article had a lot of depth to it. It included fake quotes from real people approving or disapproving the bill, dropping big names like Press Secretary Josh Earnest and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, so it’s easy to see how people we’re convinced. The actual size of the audience this article reached and convinced was almost alarming.
However, If you actually read the entire article, it’s hard to take any of what the writer, Raoul Stockton, was saying as fact. There were entries from citizens saying they thought the bill was a joke, as well as entries from an outraged republican bashing the bill, and a democratic supporter saying she’s considering quitting her job to find a better one now that she’s in line for a new car.
With Obama’s current shaky relationship with Congress, it’s hard to imagine any unusual bill like this would be passed. The humor of the whole article was proven further by the fact that the people they interviewed sounded like the stereotypical view of both sides of the political spectrum. With the Republican droning on about the laziness of the unemployed, and the Democrats getting overly excited about a bill passed for the less fortunate, and claiming to use the service themselves.
As it turns out, after doing some research I discovered that the idea – though it was still a fiction – had more than just one politician backing the idea. In fact, Mitt Romney – who ran against Obama in his re-election period – was the one who originated the idea. The idea behind Mitt Romney’s version of welfare was that those who wished to receive welfare must also be working. Romney knew that people needed to get to work, so he was actually the first to propose the idea of offering cars to those who had jobs but no means of transportation.
All in all, the idea of ObamaCars is just that: an idea. The Empire News article, though very convincing, was written by a satirical author for a satirical website. Even though the idea has a surprising history and would be something I’m sure we’d all like to argue about, it’s just fun speculation.
