When Happy Meets Crazy

   

 

Apparently prompted, or perhaps exploited, by the do-gooders at The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a one Ms. Monet Parham, not surprisingly, a government employee, is suing McDonald’s because as a consequence of their Happy Meal ads, she has been subjected to the unbearable fate of receiving from her children “constant requests for McDonald's Happy Meals.” 

Exacerbating the problem is the apparent fact that either her TV has no off switch or her children overpower her when she attempts to use it. Or perhaps while she’s sleeping the Hamburglar sneaks into her home, puts the TV on to the McDonald’s commercial network and forces her children to watch.

Unbeknownst to Ms. Parham, some child psychologists and early childhood development experts recommend saying the word "no" when a child makes an inappropriate request (Perhaps the state should fund parenting lessons to make her and those like her aware of these and other parenting secrets.)

Further details were sketchy. For example news reports did not specify which of Ms. Parham’s two children, the two or the six year old drives when it’s time to procure the latest toy. Additionally, the media failed to go into details regarding the professions from which the youngsters obtain the funds with which they purchase their delicious treats.

One final oddity surrounding this story is that listening to this woman and her handlers, you’d think the child had to eat the meal to get the toy. I doubt the store manger sits at the Parham table exhorting her children to clean their plates before he dispenses the toy of the week. Ms. Parham, if you too weak to resist your children - and if the toy and not the food is the object of your children's desire - buy the meal, keep the toy and give the food to the needy

McDonald’s is not the villain in this case. The villains are those who, unable to care for themselves, look to the government care for them by controlling the actions of others

It would be a travesty if the court disregarded the concept of individual and parental responsibility and decided in favor of these misguided plaintiffs

Disclosure: I am a McDonald's shareholder and sometimes customer. I go for the food not the toys.

When Mommy Says Yes, but the Nanny Says No!

The do-gooding politicians of Nannystate are at it again. Believing childhood obesity solvable by government edict, the San Francisco city council recently passed a law banning Satan’s tool of epicurean temptation: the Happy Meal.

The story was a focus of a number of media reports. CNN’s Anderson Copper worried of the enormous pressure applied by 3 and 4 year olds to their fragile parents. Coopper imagined a world in which we’re literally strong-armed into supplying a never-ending supply of crispy golden fries, thick frosty shakes and hot, juicy, cheese-laden burgers.

Sadly, assaults upon the ability of Americans to decide for themselves what they and their children eat are nothing new. New York’s activist mayor Michael Bloomberg has been at the forefront of these efforts, banning transfats, spending scarce city dollars on a crusade against salty soups and proposing restrictions on the purchase of soda. Not surprisingly, our government-happy state is not immune from these interventionist tendencies. In LA, prohibiting the opening of so-called fast food restaurants is seen as the panacea de jour while on the national level, first lady Michelle Obama has embarked upon a messianic quest to transform carrots into childhood’s newest guilty pleasure.

These statists would like nothing more than to have us to believe, absent their “help”, responsible parenting is an impossibility. Turn off a TV selling sugary cereals, unthinkable. Deny an unhealthy request in battleground supermarket, inconceivable. Compete with the influence exerted by a gregarious albeit fictional yellow sponge, unimaginable.

And what has the state been cooking up in it’s own glass house over the past decades? That’s right the school lunch: a grease laden, semi-edible smorgasbord of cholesterol, transfats and chemicals far unhealthier than anything that could have ever been concocted in a McDonald’s test kitchen.

To make matters worse the do-gooders have, this past year, been given a gift to make the realization of their ambitious goals eminently more achievable. The gift of course was and is Obamacare.

How can Obamacare further authorize and invigorate government intervention? As is often the case, one intrusion upon freedom is used to justify another. And with the new health care bill the connection between intrusions is obvious. A health care regime in which the state pays for the result of our “unhealthy” actions is the perfect pretext for allowing that state to control, prohibit or tax, through food and, perhaps someday, exercise policing. Perhaps even a ban on couches, TVs and videogames. How fortuitous that an entity with such an insatiable appetite for growth should receive such a powerful and protean gift.

But isn’t all this intervention really for our own good? Doesn’t the state care for and about us as we would care for and about a pet?

History tells a different tale. A tale in which the government owes its allegiance to, not our children, but the special interests. The corrupt process under which the food pyramid - actually the cheese, grain and beef, pyramid - was constructed is a legendary example demonstrating where state interests really lie.

It’s time we reject out of hand these ridiculous violations of American freedom while they’re still seen and mocked as the absurdities they are. For if we do not, and if we begin to journey slowly down the slippery slope of nanny state incrementalism, we will, before we realize it, end up as did the proverbial frog who, slowly and unknowing, had both his life and freedom cooked out of him.