h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"I think smokers have more of a problem here in that they affect more others"

Calls to mind Bill Hicks' comments:
"See, I don't drink, so I figure we're trading vices. But people say 'Bill, when you smoke, the smell makes me sick'. Oh yeah? Well, here's the thing - I can't kill someone in car because I'm smoking. And I've tried. Turn off all the lights, rush 'em - they always see the glow. 'Gee Bob, that's a big firefly comin' at us. Whoah, it's knockin' down shrubs!'"

That lost something on it's translation from performance to text...

Still, I thought it was funny.

H.

I must say that I'm a little dissapointed for the contempt that many people in this thread seem to show for the people that have brought this law suit.

If the industry, as I've stated before, has gone out of its way to promote an image as a trusted friend, if it has consistently interfered in the reporting of the health hazards represented by by it's products, and interfered with attempts to regulate their industry, both in terms of health legislation (look at their disgraceful reaction to the problem of contaminated meat products in the mid-90's) and in advertising regulation (the last proponent in the US of regulating advertising *at children* was swiftly and summarily removed from his job by a lobby group led by, you guessed it, the fast food industry) then how can they not take *some* of the responsibility for the problems caused?

Why are people that have been deliberately manipulated, and lied to, condemned as stupid, ignorant and lazy?
If we're all so damn clever and all-knowing, why haven't *we* done something to stop this? Or are we all so happy that it's a dog eat dog world, and presumably a few less fat Americans on the planet is just a few less people to wear elasticated jeans and use up *our* valuable oxygen.

Has anyone seen (in the UK) the new MacDonald's advertisement?
Lots of moody black and white shots of an equally moody young boy going through the usual crap that kids go through. This is to the theme tune from "Midnight Cowboy", the name of the track escapes me, but a stirring piece of music it is. Anyway. The payoff is he gets sat down in a MacDonalds and guess what? He smiles for the first time. The tag line?

"Macdonald's. Compensation for being six."

The missing tag line?

"But anyone else can f**k off."

I haven't seen that one, but I have today for the first time seen the "public information film", in which a gurning idiot in a red wig and makeup sings a song to the tune "Da do run run", which instructs the little drama school kiddies in not playing with matches, not drinking bleach, and generally staying safe in the home. Strangely the children have not been advised by their parents against letting a tone-deaf man in baggy dungarees into their bedrooms.

Ronald McDonald is the only adult in the commercial, which neither shows nor mentions McDonalds products in any way.

Creepy.

H.

Yeah well I hate clowns anyway.In fact I'm thinking of sueing MacDonalds for frightening me and my children with these advertisments.I'm sure they have done lasting damage to our psyche's.


Love Incog.

I thought that the clown in Stephen King's It was the scariest one around until I discovered Ronald. The one in It only harmed fictional children.

I'm not a big clown fan - they freak me out big time. When I was younger I was hardly in McDonald's because of that freaky clown, seriously.

If he told me what and what not to do, I'd much rather listen to my mum - not him, that's for sure!

Rumour also has it that at one point Rod (of Rod, Jane and Freddy fame) was Ronald, but quit when he became vegetarian and wanted to promote healthy eating and environmental awareness to children.

Not every environmentalist is a vegetarian, but every vegetarian is an environmentalist.

A bit of sidetracking, I know, but worth mentioning.

Surely the answer here is to make advertising illegal. That way we will have to rely on the evidence of our own eyes, ears, and tastebuds. This would not explain why I chose to listen to the pretty nurse with the green eyes who told me smoking was an OK thing to do.

I think we've probably gone a bit far to ban it outright, but we could tighten regulations considerably. Someone will set me straight for sure, but was it Terry Pratchett who had a king get tough on his poets? They weren't allowed to analogies unless they were accurate and could be proven - on pain of death. For instance, if you said you love was like a red, red rose, you had better make sure it had a green prickly stem, a flower on the top and roots that loved dung.

That is certainly something Pratchett would say and it sounds like The Light Fantastic to me, but it is a while since I have read that one. It was probably on this planet first: Pratchett tends to find something here, tone it down to make it more believable for fiction, and put it in the mirror which is the Diskworld for all of us to see.



I have thought for a long time that advertising anything to children is profoundly immoral. If I feel in adequate because I am driving an eight year old diesel car, when everyone else is driving junior space-ships that is my s**t. The money I pays is mine, and the choice I takes is up to me.

But deliberately creating social inadequacies in children, and using that as leverage for guilt-induced over-spending by their parents and grandparents, where is the moral justification for that?

... exactly.

On a different subject I caught on the radio the other day that the Labour party is looking for ideas on how to ban tobacco advertising.

They couldn't just ban it, could they?

Ben

"the Labour party is looking for ideas on how to ban tobacco advertising."

Try as I might, my feeble brain fails to comprehend that sentence. Surely only one idea is required?

Ok, I've only scanned this thread so I apologise if I repeat something someone else has said and/or address old issues but I wanted to say a couple of things:


1. Those people who are suing McD's? I'm sorry, they should have known better and eaten a more balanced diet nad got some exercise. McD's does not necessarily make you fat - in fact I worked for them for about 20 months and ate at least one meal from there a day and never put on any weight until after I left (I was working on the front counter a lot so I did a lot of running around).

If you eat too much of any food it is bad for you - for instance can you imagine eating potato salad and toast and drinking orange juice everyday? There have actually been deaths recorded from people drinking to much orange juice. There is nothing wrong with having McDs regularly - just the rest of your diet has to be good

Before anyone says anything tho - I can't touch the stuff now and regularly avoid their products and restaurants, I can't stand the way the staff are treated by both the corporation and their customers (why do you think that kid who serves you looks so miserable when he/she is being treated like they are thick - when they are likely at university or getting good grades at school - just because they can't hear you properly because of all the shouting and machinery noises behind them?)


2. Yes, someone did sue McD's for getting burnt by hot coffee and also an apple pie. The coffee guy was trying to drink it while he drove and spilt it in his lap when he breaked hard. Now all hot drinks and anything that could drip hot stuff (like the pies) are clearly labelled and staff are trained to pass on this information if necessary (for instance if you don't want to wait for you pie to go through the standard cooling time and are demanding it there and then).


3. Ronald M has been played by a couple of BBC kids tv presenters in the eighties and the current one who does the tours has been doing it a while. I know someone who knows who he is but that info is kept top secret as the touring RM is different from the TV RM.


Hmm I think thats it.... oh and the ingredients of a big mac etc wouldn't fit on the box but I think it's possible to find out from a store whats in your burger from the ingredients lists on the different products - no fat/calorie/vitamin content would necessarily be totally acurate however as how much lettuce etc you get would depend on the size and experience of the person who made it!

Interesting post Nicky, thanks for making it. I think you are the only person here who has worked for McDs, or who is saying so anyway.

Can I suggest that you amble through the backlog? Only some of it consists of rants. A lot of the points that would be made in reply to your comments (about the coffee, for instance, and how easy it is to get nutritional info from McDs and BK, and what their food actually contains) have already been made.

Ben
Hungry, on a bank holiday, and wondering what to eat.

About a past Ronald Macdonald here what he's up to now:

http://www.mcspotlight.org/people/witnesses/advertising/guiliano_geoff.html

Certainly sounds like Pratchett, and rings a bell. Of couse Pratchett reserves his real vitrol for mime artists!

My daughter works for MacDonalds whilst she's doing her A levels. I'm not impressed by the way they treat their casual staff, but whilst keeping a caeful eye on her, I consider it a learning experience for her, and an encouragement to work on those grades.

Eating healthily may be a personal thing, but parents in the late 80's ate at MacDonalds because it was one of the few places in England you could go with small children without being treated like a leper.

I suppose senseless litigation annoys me mainly because of my dislike for the legal system, which I see as lawyers playing games, rather than any pursuit of justice or common sense. All of which I suppose means that I support MacDonalds on this one, I'm sure we all know the story of the person who sued Black & Decker after trying to cut a friends hair with a strimmer ? Allowing these persons access to a lawyer confounds my personal opinion that stupidy is a terminal illness.

Maybe I'd better resume my medication.

(Climbs of soabox, pours , sits down and cries for the stupidity of the world and his hopes for his children.) Tell me Kris is this really the best of all possible worlds?

"Allowing these persons access to a lawyer *confounds* my personal opinion that stupidy is a terminal illness."

Should be "compounds". Stupid.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,781085,00.html

Oh, look, the fat stupid American who should be allowed to die because of his obese stupidity has a name and a point of view.

From that story: "he didn't even stop gobbling burgers and salty fries after his first heart attack in 1996". I'm forced to wonder why he isn't suing his doctor.

The only way this guy can have remained as ignorant as he claims to be for so long is because presumably, even *after* his heart attack, his doctor didn't tell him that "gobbling burgers and salty fries" was a bad idea. A doctor who offers no tips on diet to a man who has had a heart attack is surely guilty of gross professional negligence. I had a cholesterol test ten years ago which came out highish, and was deluged by the doctor with advisory leaflets. I can't believe a resident of the USA could have suffered a heart attack in the 1990s and walked out of the hospital still thinking burgers were good for him. He must, surely, have ignored the information offered him, or not understood it. If he ignored it, it's his own fault. If he didn't underdstand it, that's at least partly his doctor's fault, and nothing whatever to do with any fast food company.

So, is his doctor completely blameless? Or is he just, despite no doubt being a relatively high earner, just not rich enough for this person to imagine making a lot of money off?

H.

An addiction is an addiction.If we are addicted to something we don't always listen to good advice that it is bad for us even if it is coming from an expert.Indeed with all the conflicting advice that we already get from different experts we already have enough problems.Look at Mad Cow Disease advice,the MMR advice given out in the media and you just aren't sure who to believe.However with the wealth of advice given on the news,daytime shows,in magazines and newspapers and taught in schools in this day and age I think it is almost impossible not to realise that junk food is not good for you.
I know this man started eating this food in the 50's when the information available was sparse but in the last 40 years you would have had to live on Mars not to know that junk food is not recommended by just about everyone who has access to a wordprocessor and therefore in the media.For once the media can hold up it's head and say that it has warned of the dangers of a poor and a bad diet.Plus there are enough government warnings both here and in the US as to the effects of too much junk food.

However that said good luck to him.Anything that makes people stop eating so much of this junk must be a good idea.I however don't hold out much hope as we all usually know how bad our addictions are for us but we still tend to give into them.

Incog.

But there is no physical adddiction like with tobacco or alcohol. We all know how hard it can be to stop smoking. But when this guy found out junk food is bad for you, there was nothing that kept him from eating salad instead. That he maybe believed Ronald McDonald over his doctor is his own fault.

He should have been able to look at hos diet and see if something was wrong. He said he thought "100% beef" meant it was healthy. Not McD's fault is it? They were just trying to say it was good quality meat. If I eat a steak that is good quality, it might still have a lot of fat in it. But in moderate amounts there is nothing wrong with that. However I would not eat a steak 5 times a week, I know that would be bad for me. The doctors say oatmeal is very healthy. If I ate nothing but that for the next year I'd probably also drop dead. I wouldn't blame the doctors, just me being stupid for not thinking for myself.

I can't remember any junkfood place ever saying their food was healthy. If they did, I think they would also get in big trouble. And maybe they get sports stars to advertise for them, they are idols after all. I think they also get popstars to do the same. There just aren't many idols that are obese.