Free MacDonalds Happy Meal for your kid! :-)

Hey look! Lucky students at Seminole County, Florida elementary schools (that's primary school for all y'all Britishers) get rewarded with free MacDonalds Happy Meals on their school report cards.

Susan Pagan was surprised by her 9-year-old daughter's report card. It wasn't the fact that she made the honor role. Rather it was the fact that she expected to get a free Happy Meal because of her grades.

Nitai Prabhu (he's an American devotee - don't shoot me!) sent me the link to this. Just so you don't think this is a US-bashing spree, check out Dave Jorm's conclusion about a church he recently visited in Australia where they attempted to out him as an "occult idolator":

Maybe the holy spirit really did whisper in her ear, but there is no way the truth the light and the way is in a church where you get a free McDonalds voucher the first time you attend.

Anyway, back to the US...

Last night I went to the hotel fitness room and did some jogging on a treadmill. In true high sugar/high fat style, while you do some fitness activity you turn your mind to sludge by watching and listening to Fox News on TV at the same time.

The story of these report cards came on (Nitai Prabhu - do you watch Fox News? ;-). From what the "news" guy said I got the impression that some parents were unhappy about this. Like the lady in the Adweek article above said:

(Susan Pagan) said explaining to her daughter that they weren't going to collect the free Happy Meal "made me look like the bad guy."

Then suddenly one of the two commentators launches into a full passionate rant about the government interfering in people's lives: "If we wanted the government to raise our kids we would have given them to them when they were born. I'm sick of the government trying to tell me how to raise my kids. I like MacDonalds! I like Big Macs! I like fries! Of course it's not meant to be eaten every day! That's obvious!"

I picked up on the populist rebuttal of Super Size Me, Morgan Spurlock's film where he eats Maccas every day for a month and just about kills himself in the process.

The other guy acted as a foil, and I was waiting for him to lay down the counter point - you know, something like: "Yes, that's right - it's not the government's place to interfere in raising our kids, and that's why they shouldn't be shoving MacDonalds down kids' throats. People should choose if they want to take their kids to MacDonalds or not, and shouldn't have the school exposing them to it."

But he didn't... the guy just ranted like this, making out that there was a government conspiracy to control his life and stop him from going to Maccas, and then they went on to something else.

Anyone with only a half a brain, which I am forced to conclude is going to be anyone who regularly eats Maccas and watches Fox News, is going to come away with a complete misunderstanding of the issues, but feeling pretty riled up and self-righteous. It was real argumentum vox populi. It was a complete distortion of the issue and a rabble rousing rant on a supposed news presentation. I don't want to come off sounding high-brow here, but you could play that, unmodified, as a parody sketch on TV in Australia and get a whole lot of laughs...