Scapegoating a Clown

“RESPONSIBILITY, n.

A detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one's neighbor. In the days of astrology it was customary to unload it upon a star.”  ~ Ambrose Bierce

A notorious criminal lost a court appeal this week.  U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney turned down this unrepentant malefactor’s bid to have his case heard in Federal Court, ruling that the desperado would have to be tried in State Court.  The felon is none other than Ronald McDonald.  It seems that there is a proposed class action lawsuit against this clown for using toys to lure children into his restaurants in order to make them fat.  Sound all very lurid doesn’t it?  Sounds all very ridiculous too.

The suit was brought by Monet Parham and its aim is to force McDonald’s to stop using toys as a marketing tool.  Parham complains that her daughter asks to go to McDonald’s to get toys that are in the Happy Meals.  She goes on to say that the toy monopolizes the attention of the daughter and the food almost seems beside the point.  Huh?  So what’s the problem?  When the kid says, “I want to go to McDonalds,” just make a turkey sandwich, grab some carrot sticks go get the Happy Meal and when she starts playing with the toy and ignoring the food, swap out the burger and fries for the sandwich and carrots.  Problem solved.  Yeah I understand it isn't that simple since the child is already smart enough to work mom.

“I am concerned about the health of my children and feel that McDonald’s should be a very limited part of their diet and their childhood experience,” Parham said. “But as other busy, working moms and dads know, we have to say ‘no’ to our young children so many times, and McDonald’s makes that so much harder to do. I object to the fact that McDonald’s is getting into my kids’ heads without my permission and actually changing what my kids want to eat.”  Oh I get it now. You can’t say no to your kids so you need the government do it for you.  Simple.

I have an idea for Ms. Parham.  Maybe she should move to San Francisco.  In San Francisco you can get a ***** Meal.  It used to be a Happy Meal but that was before Supervisor Eric Mar went into action and sponsored an ordinance that requires any kid’s meal which offers a toy must not contain more than 600 calories (food and drink combined).  The ordinance also requires the restaurant to provide fruits and vegetables with any meal offering a toy. This must make the restaurant owners long for the days when another Ronald, Reagan, in a clownish move of his own deemed ketchup to be a vegetable.  The reasoning behind the ordinance is of course the epidemic of obesity among our nation’s youth; fat kids who in most cases grow up to be fat adults with all of the health and cost baggage that obesity carries.  At least that’s what Eric Mar would have us believe.  It turns out that Mr. Mar has the same problem that Ms. Parham has, in that he can’t say the “N” word….No!  In an interview on a local talk show Supervisor Mar complained that he had trouble saying no to his kids when they wanted a Happy Meal.  And so he did what anyone else would do in his position of power; he got a law passed so even those responsible parents who control the domestic circle and can say no most of the time, but say yes on occasion have to leave town to do so.  I'm curious what these parents are going to say if the little nipper wants to have a pull from that bottle of Stolichnaya in the liquor cabinet.

To further add to Ronald McDonald’s woes, earlier this year a group called Corporate Accountability International called for McDonalds to retire him.  Like Parham and Mar the group claims that Ronald is enticing children to eat junk food and promoting childhood obesity.  It’s not been a good year if you’re a spokesclown.

Mar got his ordinance passed and Parham might win her lawsuit and all it will amount to is those folks being able to sleep better at night thinking that they’re winning the obesity war.  The problem is Mar’s ordinance is just firing blanks and as for Ronald retiring, the clown could get hit by a train and it won’t curb childhood obesity one whit.

Let me clarify a few things here. First of all I’m not here to defend McDonalds. I don’t like McDonalds or most other fast food restaurants, and not for any other reason than they serve bad food; food as plastic as the toys that come in the kid’s meals (unless you live in SF).  I do like a good greasy burger and an unhealthy helping of onion rings now and then but I usually get my gut bombs at the local independent burger joint (tastes better and I can usually get a real malt to go with it).  I’ve also been a runner and cyclist for a good many of my 57 years and am in excellent shape.  Finally, while I don’t deny that there is indeed a crisis when it comes to generations of obese children I don’t agree that legislating menus and firing mascots makes a difference.

So if we don’t take the toys from Happy Meals and we don’t have Ronald committed to the old clowns home then what can be done?  The collective we can do nothing.  This is largely a personal matter that demands better parenting.

I’m wondering if the McDonald’s bashers are walking around with the notion in their minds that children eating junky food is some new phenomenon; as if kids in the ante-obese years never gorged on Halloween candy, never fed off the ice cream truck and never inhaled the contents of the Christmas stocking.  Are they suggesting that the family diet was healthier in generations past?

When I was growing up, candy, ice cream, donuts and a variety of other crap were the childhood staples.  When it came to the dinner table, it usually groaned under the weight of a meat and potatoes diet, loaded with fat, butter, whole milk and saturated fats.  There was nowhere near the dietary awareness that we have today, mom didn’t know about the food pyramid, calories weren’t counted, there were no food exchanges, and there was no Center for Science in the Public Interest or any other culinary cops that I know of. 

And so while a fat laden, sugar coated diet isn’t a new innovation something has changed since my childhood; activity.  Physical activity is becoming extinct.  When parents aren’t allowing their children to grow roots into the couch playing video games they’re treating them like porcelain dolls, yelling at them not to run because the little darlings might fall and get a boo-boo.  The parents of my childhood banned couchpotatoism.  We got an hour or so of afternoon lounging before an angry, “Turn off that damn TV and go play,” came shrieking from the kitchen.  And play we did. We played sports, tag, hide and seek, army (yeah I know, not PC), cowboys and Indians (not PC either), climbed trees and explored the fields behind the neighborhoods and we did so for hours on end.  Our society has pulled the budget plug on physical activity.  We’ve decided that we can no longer afford to fund PE in school.  Local park and recreation departments haven’t the money to maintain playgrounds, sports fields and activity programs. 

It’s something of a national pastime in this country to shift responsibility to someone or something else.  That’s why our court system is jammed with lawsuits like Monet Parham’s.  That’s why Eric Mar wrote an ordinance when he lacked the testicular fortitude to say no to his little angels.  Mar and Parham had better learn to make NO a part of the lexicons before the cherubs become defiant teens, or the inmates will be running their asylums.  But isn't that happening already?

There is a generational disconnect that is taking place if it hasn’t already. My generation recalls physical education programs, sports, hours of childhood play and parents who knew how to say no.  All of that has become anecdotal as physical education has gone the way of the rotary telephone, hours of video gaming are becoming accepted behavior and worst of all parental spines have become so much jelly.  It’s time to accept personal responsibility and stop feeling comfy and self-righteous for roughing up a clown.

Finally, it would be nice if legislators would park their issues at the workplace door.  We don't need the teetotaler assemblyman sponsoring dry laws, vegan senators legislating against pork (the eating kind) and congressmen trying to regulate the Bowl Championship Series when their favorite team doesn't get into the National Championship Game.  And we don't need a supervisor outlawing a rubber super hero out of a kid's meal because he can't control his children.