Duck and Cover Your Ass

We'd like to extend a big Badvertised salute to the United States Government's Department of Homeland Security and the Ad Council on their collaboratively produced website, Ready.gov . On this site you'll find lots and lots of helpful tips for making you and your family more prepared. You might be wondering, "But prepared for what?" But you see, that's the beauty of it: you should be more ready for everything -- especially unpredictable emergencies. The website suggests helpfully that you ask yourself if you would be ready for, say, an influenza pandemic or unspecified explosions.

Ready.gov wants you to realize that you probably haven't planned carefully for most emergencies. To illustrate this point, Ready.gov presents the following PSA (Public Service Announcement):


Oh dear, these folks are unprepared! When something really bad happens, boy are they going to be in for a surprise! Like, for instance, what if there was a really awful hurricane that swept into their city and the levees failed? Clearly if something like that happened, the people at fault would be the silly folks depicted in this ad who didn't even think to prepare themselves for a natural disaster!

I mean, what do they expect? That their government should promote their general welfare or something? Keep dreaming, suckers!

No matter how hard it tries to sugarcoat its real message, here's what Ready.gov is trying to say: "You know how to best prepare for a disaster? Easy: be wealthy. That way we can shirk our responsibility as an agency chartered to protect you in the event of an emergency. We're the United States Government, and we'd rather spend money telling our own citizens to figure out their own disaster preparedness strategies individually than spend money preparing to save them collectively. So don't come whining to us when your home is flooded, crybabies."

Make no mistake about it: the videos on Ready.gov aren't PSAs (Public Service Announcements): they're PSAs (Preemptive Shifting of Accountability).

P.S. Am I alone in thinking that the soundtrack for this PSA is suspiciously similar to Izrael "Bruddah Iz" Kamakawiwo'ole's Somewhere Over The Rainbow?