Wednesday, May 6, 2009
A bad week for celebrities and fast food
First off, Obama and Biden’s glorified trip to a strip mall (with the press core in tow) to get hamburgers seemed amiss to me. Study after study demonstrates that the beef industry leaves a massive carbon footprint – well beyond any other meat, let alone crops – and is the least efficient use of arable land. To drive across state lines in order to then publicize a meal that harms the environment seems off point for a White House that has paid so much lip service to combating global warming. Moreover, hamburgers and potato puffs are not the healthy foods that the American diet so desperately needs. The poor diet in this country is a major contributing factor to high healthcare costs. It’s illogical to think that you can simultaneously aim to improve healthcare while creating a media event over the gormandizing of high-caloric foods.
If he wants to lead by example, Obama should walk from his office and purchase a healthy meal that doesn’t leave a massive carbon footprint. If he wants a burger, have the White House kitchen make one. I assume he doesn’t smoke in public out of fears that it would set a bad example. Is it too much to ask for him to do the same with his meal choices? If he wants to indulge his vices, fine; just do it with a modicum of privacy.
The second disappointment was Oprah’s give away of KFC coupons. I understand that it was an attempt to push a ‘healthier’ option, but if you add up the calories in the giveaway, they still total in excess of 700+ for the meal, not including a beverage or condiments. While by no means the worst thing that could be ordered from KFC, this it still a far cry from healthy eating. Furthermore, the entire promo has the secondary effect of sending people to a fast food outlet for yet another meal. These are the habits that should be broken, not reinforced. Moreover, the promotion neglects the growing numbers of Americans that are either vegan or vegetarian (or those who keep Halal or Kosher). A tie in with Subway would have been far more inclusive, and sent a much clearer message of health. Or, even better, the promotion could have been structured in such a way as to spur people to prepare their own food.
Friday, January 9, 2009
All hail paterfamilias Obama!
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Say it ain't so...
Should Obama also invite David Duke to speak so that he can "come together" with white supremacists? Or should have L. B. Johnson felt the need to have noted segregationists speak at an inauguration (hypothetically speaking)?
I find this exceptionally disappointing. I understand the need to bring people together, but there must be limits to the bigotry that you include, and including a man who took an active role in stripping the benign rights away from citizens based on a myopic view of morality clearly crosses this line. Yes, I believe Obama should continue to engage Evangelicals in an open and respectful dialog, but I think it is rather obscene to give Warren the cache and acceptance that an inaugural address grants.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Drunk on technology
I keep hearing that the US is falling behind in science and technology. So what? What are the opportunity costs of gains in science? Less literature and music? Less idle time for the young? Less time spent home with family? Less values? Less joy? In the extreme, we will have a generation that can create the wonders of the future, but have no moral bearings as to if and how they should. It seems that often it is not more technology that is needed, but rather less. The problems of systemic obesity in the US will not be cured through the further implementation of food science, but through its significantly reduced application. The world will not be safer if we continue to master the splitting of the atom, but rather will only be secure if we remove the Damoclean nuclear threat by obliterating the technology used to achieve the feat in the first place. The advances in risk management technologies have not insulated our investments from wild swings, but rather have acted antipodal to this desire, creating unprecedented volatility and uncertainty: created systemic risk. Everywhere I look technology seems to be at the root of our problems; the very same technologies developed a generation before with the intent of fixing the problem leftover from the previous technologies, and so on and so forth. We have become drunk on technology and the misbegotten hangover is just starting to commence.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
That is so classist (classless)
“You had a library in your house? That’s so bourgeois and snobbish of your family.”
“You honestly think so? You know, if this was a TV room we were talking about no one would bat a lash at its mention.”
“No one here is creating a fuss.”
“No, hear me out. It is completely acceptable to spend thousands of dollars every four or five years to have brand new state of the art televisions and hundreds more on speakers and cables, and DVD players, and God-knows-what-else, et cetera, et cetera. And then add on top of that a thousand dollars a year for the satellite hookup and TIVO subscription, and movies at $20 a pop…and all that extravagance is completely non-elitist, non-snobbish, kosher middle class values but when my family decides to spend an equivalent, or perhaps even lesser sum of money on properly and adequately storing our books all of a sudden it's snobbish. That is downright classist when you say that. Now I’m not accusing you of being malicious, but subconsciously all this disaffected middle class propaganda has definitely infected you, turned you against us.”
“Wait, you think there is some sort of middle-class war on the rich?”
“Not against the rich per se, but against upper-class intellectualism. It’s these same people that turned the words elite and elitism into pejoratives in the first half of this last century. And do you ever watch TV? Remember Frasier? The whole premise was let’s have viewers laugh at these two upstanding brothers because they are well educated and have modicum of refinement. Or on Law & Order, it is always some rich old-moneyed type who is involved in some heinous crime. It is all right there.”
“Wait, I thought your family didn’t have a TV room?”
“No - of course we have a TV room, but that's immaterial here.”