John Stewart has compared the contemporary news media to the movie Gaslight.

The Hill has an article about Sanjay Gupta and his probable role in promoting Obama's health care legislation which is penned by Ben Goddard. And who is Ben Goddard? Source Watch offers this morsel:

Goddard Claussen is notorious for its "Harry and Louise" advertisement that helped derail President Clinton's 1993 health reform proposal.

Never misses an opportunity to fail to lead, does he? TalkLeft.

He certainly should. Buck Naked Politics has much linky goodness:

Yeah, it's pretty awful. Many blogging Dems, including some who tilt toward Obama, are lifting their eyebrows at this new riff on an old non-favorite. ... Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns, and Money is appalled at this "recycling of Republican talking points."

I wasn't at all bothered by Obama's invocations of Reagan; I'm sure that virtually every politician elected since 1986 has said something nice about the Gip at some point. But using what amounts to a facsimile of the 1994 anti-health care ad is pretty twitchy.  (LGM)

As one of those health care advocates says, what's needed now is for Obama to RETRACT IT.

Hey, Harry & Louise is so 90s! I thought we were supposed to put the battles of the 90s behind us? So confusing!

God. Paul (Yes, I know he's is an OFB hate figure here's why that is) Krugman writes today:

The Obama campaign sends out an ugly mailer. Sorry, but this is just destructive — like the Obama plan, the Clinton plan offers subsidies to lower-income families. And BO himself has conceded that he might have to penalize people who don’t buy insurance until they need care. So this is just poisoning the well for health care reform. The politics of hope, indeed.

Update: Ezra Klein adds a screenshot of the original Harry and Louise ad — they’ve obviously deliberately copied it. Just to remind everyone, Harry and Louise were the center of the vile smear campaign the insurance lobby waged against health care reform in 1993 — and this time a Democratic candidate is doing the smearing for them.

Ezra-- who is no Obama hater--summarizes how dishonest and manipulative America's favorite baritone really is:

The Obama campaign kept [the Harry and Louise] hairstyles and barely even changed their clothing -- which is really quite unfair to Harry and Louise, who probably let go of the plaid years back. What's worse is that the argument they're making is applicable to any kind of universal health care arrangement, including the arrangements Obama himself will eventually have to adopt.

Lovely. But not unexpected, eh?