A bad week for celebrities and fast food

I was disappointed twice this week in matters of food and publicity. celebrities

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.

All hail paterfamilias Obama!

Masquerading as eudemonistic soothsayers, the soon to be Obama administration strike me of late as condescending autocrats with noble intentions yet a dismal view of the citizens they aim to save. America voted for a president, yet unwittingly appointed a pontifex maximus. President elect Barack Obama has a demonstrated a chilling predilection towards paternalism. And of all the varieties, his seems to be the worst brand; not the comparatively benign demonstrative variety that most politicians trend towards, but rather the dangerous and miasmic type predicated on disimpassioned utilitarian calculations. He believes He is helping the plebeian masses, because only He - The Chosen One - can comprehend the complex world that swirls around and confounds us hoi polloi. He must protect us from ourselves, because left to our own machinations we will surely flounder. Cigarettes are terrible (it's OK for dad to smoke, but best not let the kids), so He will help us all quit by raising the already sizable taxes. (Am I the only one whose first inclination was to draw parallels between this and Kim Jung Il’s dictate that when he quit smoking, everyone in North Korea must also quit?) Trillion dollar deficits? No worries, who better to spend future generation’s monies than His team of the best and the brightest, all under the patria potestas of paterfamilias Obama. He has crunched the numbers – He used focus groups and survey data to pitch his stimulus plan to congress. Mark Twain once opined “there are three types of lies: lies, dirty lies, and statistics.” The governance of the next four years will be strikingly different from that of the last eight, if for no other reason through a shift in tactics from the first two varieties of obfuscation to the third type. Get ready to witness the world when a team of self-anointed Cassandra’s (this time with statistics!) takes charge. Perhaps if we are lucky, they can spare Troy from destruction.