By Randazza
The LA Times reports:
The Center for Science in the Public Interest has filed a lawsuit against McDonald’s Corp., claiming that the company’s meals with toys unfairly entice children into eating food that can do them harm. (source)
Here’s the thing. I agree.
I agree that McDonald’s is rat dung. I agree that no human should consume that crap, unless that human is as hung over as a whore on the sixth of May in Nogales. (In which case, Mickey D’s and a vicodin is just what the doctor ordered). Short of that, any person who has too many McDonald’s molecules in their body is simply a piece of refuse.
Has “The Center for Science in the Public Interest” considered the fact that any child young enough to be enticed by the toys in happy meals is too damn young to buy their own food? Doesn’t “The Center for Science in the Public Interest” believe in evolution? Their name sounds like they would, but their actions speak otherwise.
Human beings have no natural predators. Some parents, like mine, said “fuck no” when I whined and bitched for McDonalds. Other parents can’t resist the advertising. We do need to thin the herd. Perhaps if a kid is 300 lbs and has seven kinds of diabetes and ass cancer by the time he is 7 because his parents don’t know how to say “fuck no, eat your broccoli and shut up you whining little shit,” then that means that his family is an evolutionary dud — that is how nature works.
The lead plaintiff in the suit is Monica Parham, a mother of two from Sacramento who said the company “uses toys as bait to induce her kids to clamor to go to McDonald’s,” the organization said.(source
And my two year old clamors to hold my revolver, to ride on my motorcycle, to drink beer, to put her fingers in the power outlet, to run out into traffic, and to jump off the boat dock when she can’t swim yet.
You know what my job is as a parent? I say “no.”
I don’t file a lawsuit against Smith & Wesson for making my revolver shiny and pretty. I don’t file a lawsuit against Moto Guzzi for making my motorcycles so fucking awesome. I don’t sue Hoegaarden for making great beer. I don’t sue SDG&E for putting electricity in my house. I don’t sue the city for letting cars drive down my street. And I sure as shit don’t sue hydrogen and oxygen for combining to look like some thing fun to jump into.
Instead, I do what mammals have done for a motherfucking billion years — I protect my young by using my judgment. That’s how we wound up with opposable thumbs and brains that gave us the space program — by the intelligent members of our species protecting our young, while the dumbasses stood in the way as the lava flowed down the hill or the sabertooth tigers ate our kids.
If Monica Parham doesn’t understand how to be a parent, then perhaps the right remedy is to bring back Buck v. Bell and sterilize her moronic ass, and to let her kids eat all the junk food they want so that they remove themselves from the gene pool. Because if humans had natural predators, someone as stupid as Monica Parham would have been eaten by a pterodactyl a long time ago.
Well said.
hoegaarden…?
It’s a truly awesome beer.
Somehow I get this group is the same one that sued McDonald’s on behalf of the lady who bought and spilled hot coffee on her lap while driving in her car away from the McDonald’s drive through.
The comparison is inaccurate. If you do your research and homework, you will find that the “hot coffee case” was actually justified.
Assuming that the “hot coffee case” in question is Liebeck, I will admit that there was a sort of factual basis for it. The coffee was hot, and she did get burned.
That is not really convincing justification. If I order drive-thru coffee, I generally expect it to be hot. I’d probably be sore if it were not. And I know what will happen if I put it down there in the sensitive areas and spill it.
There are other hot coffee cases out there that went up on appeal. My favorite, despite my usual gloomy view of the US 7th Circuit, has got to be McMahon v. Bunn-o-Matic, 150 F.3d 651 (US 7th Cir. 1998).
To add to Marc’s point below, because I know you won’t look it up, the McDonald’s coffee case boiled down to (pardon the pun) McDonald’s attorneys pushing the lady around. I believe she originally sued for something like $22K, and she almost certainly would have lost, but McDonald’s screwing with the discovery process got them what amounted to a huge fine.
In fairness to the lazy readers, you should point out the difficulty in looking up a trial case which settled before appeals.
good point. But this particular one is famous enough that there’s info out there:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restaurants
So yeah, she offered to settle for $20K, the vast majority of which was medical expenses and lost income. Whenever I tell anyone I’m a lawyer, this is the first thing they bring up. “So you gonna sue McDonald’s if I pour this coffee on myself?”
Oh, and this one didn’t settle- it had to go to appeals so McDonald’s could get the amount lowered.
Right on, bro.
hahhhaaa i absoutly love this blog. so trueeeee!!!!!!!!!!1111
Add in the fact the lady filing suit just happens to be the person in charge of encouraging CA citizens to eat their Veggies, and this picks up a whole new dimension
Damn straight!
Only, Dad always let us have McDonalds. Though, in all fairness, I do remember Dad eating the rest of my food when I wasn’t done when we went there.
And how come you never have Hoegaarden when I visit?!
This could be the greatest literary work I have ever read
We were too poor to eat McDonald’s. Instead, we ate nutritionally dense – and healthy – foods like beans. Small serving sizes, too. Now it seems like only the poor eat McDonald’s, and the rich are eating lentils. Weird inversion of values.
Marco Randazza a closet Creationist? OMG! He has humans and pterodactyls sharing the same slice of time!
But wait! He has humans (or at least mammals) around a billion years ago. That even pre-dates the dinosaurs.
So confused!! Maybe an Egg McMuffin[TM] will sort me out.
You caught me!
Hoegaarden combined with Reed’s ginger beer makes the worlds best shandy.
Do we really need to ‘bring back’ Buck V. Bell? Has the precedent ever been invalidated? The specific laws may have been repealed, or left unenforced, but is there really any Constitutional impediment to their revival?
Due process something something fundamental right to privacy in sexual relationships. Buck v. Bell was never directly overruled as a matter of doctrine so far as I’m aware, but even if the statutes still exist or are brought back, good luck enforcing it in the wake of Griswold, Roe v. Wade, Lawrence v. Texas, and their compatriot cases. Not that those aren’t good decisions, but from where I sit, they’re a definite impediment to a jesus tent-style revival of Buck v. Bell.
harsh much? pterodactyls deserve better.