CMA Awards 2013: Obamacare Mocked by Hosts Carrie Underwood, Brad Paisley
Country music stars Carrie Underwood and Brad Paisley garnered a lot of laughs from the audience while hosting last night's Country Music Awards in Nashville, with one of their most popular skits mocking the efficiency of Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act.
During their opening monologue, Paisley told Underwood that he was experiencing back pain, to which Underwood responded that he should sign up for Obamacare. When Paisley asked her to elaborate on what Obamacare was, Underwood quipped: "Oh, it's great! I started signing up last Thursday and I'm almost done!"
The two country music stars then sat down in front of a laptop on stage and pretended to access the Obamacare website, claiming that the laptop began smoking and the screen malfunctioning; ultimately, Underwood congratulated Paisley on "[joining] the six other people" who have successfully signed up for Obamacare. Since its rollout last month, the Obamacare website has been plagued with issues predominately regarding its inability to hold thousands of visitors on the website at one time.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
The awards show hosts then went on to sing a spoof on George Strait's classic "Amarillo By Morning" by subbing in references to Obamacare, such as "ObamaCare by morning/ Why's this taking so long?" The Obamacare jokes at the 47th annual Country Music Awards gained a raucous applause from the audience, with hoots and cheers echoing the show's venue as the hosts continued with their monologue.
Some Obamacare supporters were not too happy with the jokes, however, with one viewer taking to Twitter to say: "I think it's very disrespectful for the country award to make fun of obamacare! You didn't do jokes on anything that bush did!"
In addition to the Obamacare jokes, the opening monologue of the CMA's also included references to the MTV Video Music Awards and the now infamous performance of pop star Miley Cyrus and R&B artist Robin Thicke. At one point during the CMA's opening act, cast members of the hit A&E reality series "Duck Dynasty" came out on stage and danced to Thicke's hit summer song, "Blurred Lines."
Last night's 47th Annual Country Music Association Awards in Nashville also included suprising winners and losers; both Jason Aldean and Lady Antebellum went home with no awards for the second year in a row, while the 25-year-old Kacey Musgraves won New Artist of the Year. Taylor Swift was also honored for her contribution to country music with the Pinnacle Award.
