Kill the Clown!

[Fishwelding]

And for this week's edition of "Missing the Point Theater," we eagerly offer you this: Kill the Clown!. The Pablo Escobar of Portliness, the Al Capone of Carbohydrate Consumption, the Notorious B.I.G. of....well, being too big, I guess.

I hope they start an internet petition. Because those are profound, world-changing statements that get results, suitable for a momentous crusade such as this. Though they fail in not targeting Hamburger or Grimace. One encourages crime, and the other body-shape that does not conform to the New Order.

[richter111]

When you walk like us, talk like us, and think like us, we will be happy.

I read some of the comments, and thought how spot on they were, especially the one talking about boxing your kids up, the rest of us will go on living like we have the last 50 years.

[ventura_kelley]

When you walk like us, talk like us, and think like us, we will be happy.

I read some of the comments, and thought how spot on they were, especially the one talking about boxing your kids up, the rest of us will go on living like we have the last 50 years.

Walk?

You mean waddle?

Because it's not easy to walk with 80 pound thighs where the fat on our ankles is hanging over the sides of your shoes.

Or maybe lurch and gasp, lurch and gasp, lurch and gasp.

You guys looked at a playground recently? I took my daughter to school and some of those kids out there had more overhang that I do. No wonder they created video games. We're turning into Wall-e World (link to a picture)(link to wikipedia) .

If advertising ISN'T getting to people and making them want to buy stuff they otherwise wouldn't, then why do these companies spend $155,466,000,000 on it in 2006 alone? Yep, that's right, $155 BILLION and change, or 2.1% of our GDP. (source)

Boy, those companies must be filled with a bunch of suckers if they're spending $155 BILLION on something that has no effect on our spending/eating habits whatsoever.

Or we could just come up with a conspiracy theory about how people that hate advertising and want it to stop are part of a secret plot to get us to join the New World Order or something...

There's actually a huge amount of irony in the statements that support continuing advertising by claiming that opposing it has something to do with mind control and loosing freedom.

[ventura_kelley]

Walk?

You mean waddle?

Because it's not easy to walk with 80 pound thighs where the fat on our ankles is hanging over the sides of our shoes.

Or maybe lurch and gasp, lurch and gasp, lurch and gasp.

You guys looked at a playground recently? I took my daughter to school and some of those kids out there had more overhang than I do. No wonder they created video games. We're turning into Wall-E World (link to a picture)(link to wikipedia) .

If advertising ISN'T getting to people and making them want to buy stuff they otherwise wouldn't, then why did these companies spend $155,466,000,000 on it in 2006 alone? Yep, that's right, $155 BILLION and change, or 2.1% of our GDP. (source)

Boy, those companies must be filled with a bunch of suckers if they're spending $155 BILLION on something that has no effect on our spending/eating habits whatsoever.

Or we could just come up with a conspiracy theory about how people that hate advertising and want it to stop are part of a secret plot to get us to join the New World Order or something...

There's actually a huge amount of irony in the statements that support continuing advertising by claiming that opposing it has something to do with mind control and loosing freedom.

Corrected - don't post tired people!

[Fishwelding]

There's actually a huge amount of irony in the statements that support continuing advertising by claiming that opposing it has something to do with mind control and loosing freedom.

I don't think controlling advertising is going to accomplish much. Advertising works to differentiate products, but many people aren't simply a product of the advertising they consume. I think the problem is systemic, and campaigns like this, as with others targeting the evils of this-or-that current government or corporate problems, miss the point. Americans have eaten themselves into obesity because we have unprecedentedly inexpensive food, while our lifestyles have gotten less athletic. We haven't paid attention to what the implications of this are, because our instinct is to consume. We've created a historic problem with our own prosperity, and public attitudes have not sufficiently compensated. Fine, shoot the clown. Try taxing junk food, if you think the food companies won't simply skirt such taxes with redefinition. Go for it. But it's missing the point.

Really, I'm beginning to wonder if the real crisis is a collective lack of historical perspective. Also, as someone who has lost a lot of weight voluntarily, I still think what is being preached on the subject isn't even close to the whole story, and obesity is more than simply moral deficiency. We cannot use it as a license to prejudice.

Edited March 31, 2010 by Fishwelding

[Pete "Pig" Fleischmann]

I hate clowns. Always have...but I love junk food...and Grimace reminds me of my aunt..what can ya do?

Pig

[Fishwelding]

but I love junk food...and Grimace reminds me of my aunt..what can ya do?

Pig

And that's how they get you. It's like the supermarket bakery sweets who's label calls it "Grandma's Apple Pie" or "Aunt Martha's Blueberry Cobbler." Because upon reading that title printed on a machine-printed label, just above the scanning bar code, SKU, and $4.59 price that doesn't include the sales tax, who isn't instantly transported back to a warmer, sunnier time in America when small towns and picket fences and friendly neighbors were the rule, before the evils of rock n' roll, chain convenience stores and beatniks, back when cars weighed over two tons and gas still had lead.

Pepp'ridge Fahm Remembahs!

[Huey Gunner]

Why kill the clown? Kids don't get into the car and drive to McDonalds. The parents do. Target them. While I do love Mickey "D"s, my 8 year old get's to go there only once a month.

[GreyGhost]

'Kill the Clown ! Legalize Drugs !'

Same folks saying both ...

Gregg

[ventura_kelley]

We haven't paid attention to what the implications of this are, because our instinct is to consume. We've created a historic problem with our own prosperity, and public attitudes have not sufficiently compensated.

It's not an instinct.

It's a program created to sustain an economic idea: http://www.storyofstuff.com/ Watch "The Story of Stuff" there.

Fine, shoot the clown.

I know someone who, while heavily intoxicated, did shoot one of those clown statues once after it somehow insulted his mother or something. It was seriously funny hearing about it later.

Try taxing junk food, if you think the food companies won't simply skirt such taxes with redefinition. Go for it. But it's missing the point.

Instead of taxing junk food, why don't we STOP SUBSIDIZING IT INSTEAD?

The US gives our tax dollars to companies to make unhealthy food profitable. You don't really believe that apples driven to and run through four different factories (not to mention the chemicals and other stuff they add to it) to make it apple sauce is actually cheaper than whole apples delivered from the farm do you?

So, why tax junk food, when you could just stop subsidizing it instead?

If you tax it, the taxpayer gets stuck twice, once for the tax dollars that are going to the junk food companies, and again for eating what the US government is paying them to produce.

Why not subsidize healthy food instead?

Really, I'm beginning to wonder if the real crisis is a collective lack of historical perspective. Also, as someone who has lost a lot of weight voluntarily, I still think what is being preached on the subject isn't even close to the whole story, and obesity is more than simply moral deficiency. We cannot use it as a license to prejudice.

It's no accident or moral deficiency.

The companies that make junk food designed it so that it's addictive.

Junk Food Jones Is Wired In Your Brain - http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010/03/ju...ired_in_yo.html

And:

Kessler says the multibillion-dollar food industry has done a masterful job in learning how to design foods to be optimally stimulating -- foods layered and loaded with fat, sugar and salt that are as self-reinforcing as cocaine. The more we eat of them, the more we want.

"Food is much more powerful than we realize as a stimulant," says Kessler, who, in the 1990s, led the fight for tougher U.S. federal regulation of tobacco.

"It's directly connected to the emotional core of our brains."

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/health/Many...0869/story.html

I'm not discounting the lack of personal responsibility in today's society (definitely not), but I am saying that they're deliberately making this food so that it's more addictive.

That's why it's so hard to get companies like KFC to redo their recipies to get rid of certain fats (like trans fats). Decreasing fats decreases sales. People are hard wired by centuries of fighting off famine to be strongly attracted to certain substances like sugars and fats.

Speaking of personal responsibility...I'm supposed to be doing something else right now. You all take care.

Later.

[Fishwelding]

It's not an instinct....

That's why it's so hard to get companies like KFC to redo their recipies to get rid of certain fats (like trans fats). Decreasing fats decreases sales. People are hard wired by centuries of fighting off famine to be strongly attracted to certain substances like sugars and fats.

Yes, exactly, that's what I mean by instinct. Honestly, You said it stronger than I did. And if capitalism seeks a way to profit from it, that isn't at all surprising. I'm being told by cable television I need all 900 channels, and every car dealer that my life would be complete with an overpriced SUV, and so on, and so on. We've been subsidizing healthy food--apples are apples before they're apple sauce, as are grains, as are corn, as is dairy--for as long as we subsidized farmers, which was the first major subsidy programs in the United States. Plus, advertising is employed by a zillion-dollar health-nut industry too, whether it be gyms, exercise equipment, gimmicks, diet foods, and so on, some of which are honest, others are not--again, not surprising. And the U.S. government has already made all sorts of efforts to try and educate people to eat better, define standards, assist school programs, and so on. But just as people aren't sheep before advertising, they're not going to go along with any of it if they don't want to.

All of these--McDonalds, Total Gym, and nutrition.gov--derive market share from many people's life choices, and circumstances other than those companies can hope to create. It's not simply that people need to take more personal responsibility, because I'll readily concede it can be very tough today to live healthy. But this more than simply insidious strategy by snack and fast food hucksters. After all, one of the reasons obesity hits low-income brackets hard is because food is cheap entertainment, compared to many other things now; the cost of other forms of entertainment is not something Yum Foods or Frito-Lay can easily decisively control.

But again, let's go back to history. If you were white-collar male living in a 1925 suburb--not a mill worker, or farmer, mind you--you'd potentially burn a lot more calories. First, when you got up in the morning, you might shovel coal into your furnace. Then, to go to work, you didn't drive a four-wheeled couch, but instead walked a half-mile to a streetcar stop--back then, "car" was shorthand for trolley, not automobile. Then, on the tcar, you stood and swayed with the motion because the greedy jerks who owned the streetcar company (ruthless utility corporation, everyone believed then) refused to put more streetcars on the line, and seats were long since filled before the car finally rattled up to you. Then, upon getting to work, you might have an elevator, but maybe not. In the office, your files were files. You had to get out of your chair and go get them, not click a mouse. Telephone calls were more expensive (greedy utility?), many people didn't have a telephone, and there was no e-mail, so you had to travel to many places to talk to people. When you got home, again with the furnace! And your wife had undoubtedly more time on her feet, more heavy labor, and this without air conditioning in the summer. Your kids walked to school, or if they were lucky, might have a streetcar line to take them part of the way. At night, there was little point in staying at home, because although you might have a radio, electricity cost more (again, greedy utility company!), so you entertained yourself by trooping (again) out to the "car line" to pick up a show (movie or live) at a theater downtown. Given all of that, It's hilarious that now we must make time or spend money to exercise in our society.

People don't have the long view of why our calorie intake has gone up, while calorie requirement has gone down. And why should they? No one's explained it in a popular context? Is this explained amidst all the websites the government has created to save us from ourselves? Do we even still teach history in our schools any more? And if we do, is the same tired story of federal politics, year-after year? So I've just grown skeptical we can socially engineer a solution for the same reason that Madison Avenue masterminds didn't engineer the problem, they capitalized on it.

Edited March 31, 2010 by Fishwelding

[Huey Gunner]

What I eat is nobodies business. Especially the Government's, scientist or soap boxing ***wipes. Parents responsibility to properly feed their children. As an adult, if you want to board that high speed cholesterol train to hell, go for it. There's enough information posted out there, for people who care, to read on what their shoving down their pie hole.

[Fishwelding]

Your Tax Dollars at Work

And for the record, I personally don't object to tax dollars being spent to compile the information on this and a myriad of other websites. I'm merely amused at suggestions of extensive taxation or prohibition programs aimed at "problem foods."

Edited March 31, 2010 by Fishwelding

[Av8fan]

I knew a woman that suffered from Coulrophobia

[Huey Gunner]

Gotta go. Just got hit by a "Big Mac" attack!!

[Fishwelding]

Gotta go. Just got hit by a "Big Mac" attack!!

It was this thread, wasn't it?

[Kalashnikov-47]

Watch "The Story of Stuff" there.

What a pile of garbage that is.

Why kill the clown? Kids don't get into the car and drive to McDonalds. The parents do. Target them. While I do love Mickey "D"s, my 8 year old get's to go there only once a month.

EXACTLY!

Edited March 31, 2010 by Kalashnikov-47

[flyfort17]

They killed this clown years ago. But he came back.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRHyAynSgS4

[Fishwelding]

Why has Burger King not become a target of their rage? Or Wendy?

Maybe we should have someone investigate Colonel Sanders' service record, to make certain he's not wearing any ribbons or insignia he shouldn't.

...and upon reflection, I think it is properly the Burger King. He is the Burger King. Presumably he has some sort of first name, and probably a family name.

....and while it's about the only thing Wikipedia is good for, Wikipedia is good for looking up such inanities. Their article on The Burger King is quite interesting. "Sir Shake-a-Lot?" Wow, Sir Mix-A-Lot, cutting that copyright right to the quick, huh?

Edited March 31, 2010 by Fishwelding

[TaiidanTomcat]

What a pile of garbage that is.

Tools love that movie. As a college student I have had to watch that plenty times, and every time I think it was designed to indoctrinate 8 year olds. You have never seen such an oversimplification in your life until you watch that movie, and naturally like the force it works on the simple minded best. Kelley, I knew it was only a matter of time before you posted this. Why? because I hang out with folks like you all the time and they are always trying to convince me to become unique and wonderful by "free thinking" just like they do, and wherever I go and whoever I am talking to from LA to NY, they cite the same "unique" two or three sources over and over again. They mention Michael Moore a lot too, that man oozes credibility after all.

And why McDs? well this guy made a movie where he ate nothing but McDs for a whole month, and ate until he literally threw up. surprise!! He got fat. McDs had been in the cross hairs ever since.

Kelley here is a video for you to watch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oVV1pEFeW4

Unlike Story of Stuff, This is meant to be comical

If they think that McDs retiring that clown is going to somehow make America more healthy they are taking stupid pills. Its symbolic garbage made to make folks feel like they are making some kind of difference rather than actually improving themselves in any meaningful way. Don't help a charity, or volunteer at a soup kitchen, spend your time railing against a CLOWN.

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet"

-Bill S.

Edited March 31, 2010 by TaiidanTomcat

[flyfort17]

Why don't they go after Carl's Jr. Have you seen the Hart attacks on a bun that place serves?

The food in their commercials actually make me a little queasy.

[TaiidanTomcat]

From The Article:

“For nearly 50 years, Ronald McDonald has hooked kids on unhealthy foods spurring a deadly epidemic of diet-related diseases,” said Deborah Lapidus, the senior organizer at Corporate Accountability International.

Go get him Deb!! All that has been happening the last 5 years and this is the biggest problem you could find when it came to CORPORATE ACCOUNTABILITY?

How about Parental accountability? No organization for that? oh no money there, ok got it.

DEADLY

Edited March 31, 2010 by TaiidanTomcat

[TaiidanTomcat]

My Hero!!!!! I'll second what Paul says!

Parents typically pay for it too, unless there was a free meals for fat kids program I missed.

I think we all just need to take a deep breath and realize the sheer amount of courage it takes to blame child obesity on a fictional character.

Edited March 31, 2010 by TaiidanTomcat

[Kalashnikov-47]

How about Parental accountability? No organization for that? oh no money there, ok got it.

:wub:

[Fishwelding]

Although admittedly, that's a really scary picture, actually.