Creepiest thing I've ever seen

Via Digby:



That pretty much amounts to child pornography if you ask me.

This is a German ad, by the way. But it all comes from corporate HQ. I used to be really into deconstructing advertising, so here goes: McDonald's is safety, family, and baby fat. Maybe not the last thing.

Having a child teething on a sesame-seed bun like it's a security blanket is profoundly disturbing. Especially when documented studies show that the food will kill you. I don't get as much exercise as I should (damn blogging!) but my generally healthy diet at least keeps me from going into obesity territory. I haven't had a fast-food meal in probably a year. That's probably been the average for the last 10. I also don't drink soda. I'm not force-feeding myself tofu and brown rice every two seconds, but I'm not slowly suffocating myself on burgers loaded with fats and chemicals and preservatives.

A while back the California state government sought to enact a junk-food tax as a means to curb childhoos obesity. It's just amazing that we're that fucking gluttonous as a society that we can't say no to clearly horrible food unless it falls out of our price range. I imagine a future where Doritos and Hostess Twinkies are such luxury items that they become the new Courvoisier. We'll start seeing them in rap videos. "Got my Ho-Hos and my bitches and we're riding in our double-wide..."

Government shouldn't have to intervene on this. We should just have National "Shake-A-McDonald's-Customer-And-Have-Them-Read-About-What-They're-Putting-In-Their-Body" Day. But people are funny creatures, easiily abdicating responsibility for their own bodies. Government certainly does have a role to play in setting an example, and recognizing that this is a tangible public health issue (or at the least, a more important issue than whether or not SpongeBob is gay).