As if lefty Hollywood needs any prodding to push Obamacare.
Via ABC News:
The health care overhaul might get a Hollywood rewrite.
The California Endowment, a private foundation that is spending millions to promote President Barack Obama’s signature law, recently provided a $500,000 grant to ensure TV writers and producers have information about the Affordable Care Act that can be stitched into plot lines watched by millions.
The aim is to produce compelling prime-time narratives that encourage Americans to enroll, especially the young and healthy, Hispanics and other key demographic groups needed to make the overhaul a success.
“We know from research that when people watch entertainment television, even if they know it’s fiction, they tend to believe that the factual stuff is actually factual,” said Martin Kaplan of the University of Southern California’s Norman Lear Center, which received the grant.
The public typically gets as much, if not more, information about current events from favorite TV programs as mainstream news outlets, Kaplan said, so “people learn from these shows.”
California Republican strategist Jonathan Wilcox, who has taught a course on politics and celebrity at USC, said the attempt to engage Hollywood was coming too late to influence views, and he doubted fictionalized TV would play into families’ decisions about health care.