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Down on the Clown
But long before that, another Ronald messed with mass communications no less indelibly, paving the way for today's politicians and pundits. Appropriately, the first Ronald was a clown. In 1963, sixteen years before Reagan's fateful piece to camera, Ronald McDonald broke every rule in advertising when he turned to the lens and stunned children by speaking to them directly, saying:
"Here I am kids. Hey, isn't watching TV fun? Especially when you got delicious McDonald's hamburgers. I know we're going to be friends too cause I like to do everything boys and girls like to do. Especially when it comes to eating those delicious McDonald's hamburgers."
It's easy both to wince at how crass this sounds, and to overlook its audacity. With entire TV channels premised on direct marketing to children, it seems impossible that there might have been a time where kids were considered anything other than shorter, louder, more pestering versions of adult consumers. But it wasn't always thus. It took a canny cabal of admen to tap the pockets of a newly affluent generation of youngsters. They wanted to redefine the frontiers of what advertising in television age could be. And they succeeded.
Today, the McDonald's corporation boasts that their frontman is more recognizable than Santa Claus. He's the champion of a $32 billion brand. With a wink and a smile, Ronald has charged into neighbourhoods around and inside schools, targeting children with a range of unhealthy food, plumbing every depth to keep his parent company's arches golden and bright in the minds of impressionable young eaters.
McDonald's and other fast food corporations shelter behind the fact that their advertising is 'free speech,' as protected by the First Amendment and that, in any case, the corporations clearly declare their commercial intentions. So, for instance, when children go to Ronald.com to play McD-themed games they'll see in small white letters on a pale background at the top right the words "Hey kids.This is advertising!" This isn't terribly helpful. Although children may know that something is advertising, they are unlikely to understand what, exactly that means.
Michele Simon, a lawyer and author of Appetite for Profit, tells it straight: "McDonald's knows that vulnerable children are the perfect advertising audience, since they don't even know they're being marketed to." She suspects that for the group brave enough, and with deep enough pockets, there's a huge and successful lawsuit to be brought against McDonald's (and against all advertising against children) for deceptive practices. She's backed up by the medical profession: the American Academy of Pediatrics says that "advertising directed toward children is inherently deceptive and exploits children under eight years of age." In other words, the very idea of advertising to children is a fraud. Children are simply unable to generate and entertain rational opinions about goods and services, which cuts away the argument that advertising is just a more entertaining version of truth-telling. When it comes to children, advertising is far closer to brainwashing.
Parents are being hoodwinked too. One of the reasons that kids are permitted by pestered parents to enter a McDonald's is the possibility that they might choose a healthy meal when they're there. As Wendi Gosliner, a Researcher at the Center for Weight and Health at UC Berkeley observes, "not one of the 24 Happy Meal combinations offered contains the foods and nutrients children need to meet the Dietary Guidelines. Now, they're promoting processed fresh apples dipped in caramel sauce and sweetened milk as 'healthy' choices. Well, these meals and these choices are hurting our children's health."
There's a bigger picture story here too. Ronald isn't just a clown. He's not just a pioneer in the marketing of food to children: he's also an architect. Without him, the food system we have today would look very different. Here and around the world, the way food is grown, subsidized, processed and eaten has been fashioned by the needs of the McDonald's corporation.
More sales for the clown mean bigger returns for Cargill and Tyson's factory farms, Archer Daniels Midland's high fructose corn syrup processing plants, and Monsanto's pesticide production facilities. And it's our tax dollars that go into everything from the cheap commodities that they depend on, to the small business loans and tax credits that allow fast food franchises to breed in and around our schools. For these subsidies, and for the lax regulations around health and advertising to children, the fast food industry has spent millions in lobbying fees, and aggressively courted political favour. Ronald McDonald may have a big smile, but his shoes are steel-tipped.
Ultimately, McDonald's cheap food is cheat food. Ronald is more of a Hamburgler, dipping into our pockets with our children's fingers, and leaving us with bills for long afterward. We pay for it all in the end. The cost of diabetes in the US alone is $700 for every man, woman and child. For people of colour, diet related disease is incredibly important - one in two children of colour born in 2000 will develop diabetes.
There are alternatives, of course. The sustainable agriculture that thrives in farmers markets and cooperatives don't get the billions in subsidies that industrial agriculture does. Yet from the moment they are exposed to TV, our children are subject to the manipulations of Ronald and his friends. Corporations spend $17 billion a year turning children into consumers. Globally, for every dollar spent promoting food that's good for you, $500 is spent promoting junk. For a parent wanting their kids to eat well, those are tough odds. Especially for those parents on restricted income.
Times are changing, though. Despite the millions that McDonald's spends in advertising, and despite most people having a favourable impression of Ronald as a consequence, a new survey shows that most parents who have kids under 18 want Ronald to go. The Corporate Accountability International, an organisation which I advise, has released a terrific report entitled Clowning with Kid's Health: The Case for Ronald McDonald's Retirement (PDF), in which the survey data on Ronald is presented, and some tight legal and epidemiological arguments against him are made.
This isn't some curmudgeonly attack on fun. For those who want to watch clowns, there'll always be circuses and cable news. And it's certainly the case that there are bigger questions here. Why is it that junk food is cheaper than healthy food? Why is there persistent poverty driving people into the arms of the junk food industry. Why isn't there real choice in the US diet?
But as a matter of public health, as a way to give parents the chance to get their children eating well, as a way of making it possible to have fun with food without spending scarce cash on unhealthy food, the clown's gotta go.
There is a precedent: Joe Camel, once more widely recognized than Mickey Mouse, is now a symbol of shame for the cigarette industry. Sure, cigarettes are themselves bad, but worse was the conscious attempt by the industry behind them to hook kids on a lifetime of ill health. We're at a similar moment in the transformation of our food system. There's lots to do to transform how we eat, but along the way we all need to recognize that parents need the space to be able to feed their kids well, to give the next generation the freedom to choose to eat healthily, and to build a more sustainable food system. As part of that, and I'm talking to you here, it's time to retire Ronald.
20 Comments so far
Show AllRonald McDonald as a war criminal! Not just for our kids and grandkids, but to children throughout the world.
I heard a report that Bobby Flay brought real food, good food to the kids who live in the unhealthiest town in the U.S. and they wouldn't eat it. We have one hell of a battle on our hands to save the health of this nation.
As I said, Ronald McDonald is a war criminal.
"Here I am kids. Hey, isn't watching TV fun? Especially when you got delicious McDonald's hamburgers. I know we're going to be friends too cause I like to do everything boys and girls like to do. Especially when it comes to eating those delicious McDonald's hamburgers."
In all my years of viewing McDonald's commercials (and not just in the U.S.), I haven't seen the clown take as much as a nibble of the stuff he pitched. Maybe that's why he stayed so slim.
McDonalds donated $208 000 to Re-elect Richard Nixon and I've never forgiven them for it.
With the result that I eat healthier.
You vote with your dollars every day.
The majority of advertisements aimed at children are despicable. I would love to see efforts begin to reign in this child abuse.
I'm no big fan of Ronald McDonald, but why should he be outlawed any more than any other cartoon character who sells things? Joe Camel was aimed at kids even though it's illegal for kids to smoke. It's not illegal for kids to eat hamburgers. It may not be wise, but it's not illegal, nor should it be.
When are people going to realize that eating at McDonald's is NOT THAT CHEAP. Just take a look at the price of those Happy Meals and consider how much real beef you wind up getting in the deal for your money. Eating at places like McDonald's is the last thing working people should do for themselves to stretch their food dollars. Obviously the long-term health effects are seriously dire for its steady patrons. But honestly, how long does it take to cook a burger if you must have one? It's also a well known FACT in food science that fast foods are designed to leave you feeling hungry within a short period. These are not foods that travel efficiently through the gastrointestinal tract giving one a continued source of energy for a reasonable period of time. Simply put, when it comes to cheap food, medical issues aside, surely eating out does not qualify.
So many of the intractable problems facing humanity today flow from the fallacy that we are rational beings. Of course 8 year olds don't understand marketing for what it is. Then again neither do their parents or they wouldn't let the little tykes near a TV. War, Famine, Politics, Economics- these things do not operate on a basis of rationality.
The bottomless lust for profit has transformed us into passive consumers, unquestioningly consuming poison in so many forms, and paying for the privilege.
It’s not a conspiracy people, it’s a movement.
The high cost of cheap fast food.
The high cost of cheap clean coal.
The high cost of easy-to-get home loans.
If it's cheap, the costs are high.
Funny, I never heard even one right-winger complain about "socialism" as Bush showered all the industrial farmers with government subsidies.
Ronald has proven how simple it is to Brainwash People. Look at Rush and Glen Beck, they get paid millions for their stupid branwashing tricks and people buy into it.
Sioux Rose
If there are any doubts on the issues this article brings up, watch Eric Schlosser's "Fast Food Nation." I haven't eaten a hamburger in many years, although I used to go through the drive-thru on trips to get my Chow (pet dog) a cheeseburger... and I would TELL the cashier who it was for while passing through.
Wow, we have a lot in common. I used to take my best friend Odette (German Shepherd) on car trips to Massachusetts to visit my sister all the time. I would pack up my work and my friend, and we would stay up there and work for a week. I would stop at McDonald's when we would go here and there and get her a cheeseburger.
I saw "Fast Food Nation" three years ago and that was the very, very last time I ever graced a McDonald's or any of its progeny with my presence. Movies like these are buried treasures -- of course, they're buried for a reason.
In my opinion "Fast Food Nation" should be required viewing in schools. But schools only show 'fluff,' or at least they did when my son was in school.
War toys and dolls deserve the same legal action.
It's where our drone pilots come from.
Buy organic, eat organic and tell everyone how much better it tastes.
It will grow in popularity, then take over.
'When Ronald Reagan ended his presidential debate with Jimmy Carter in 1979 with "Are you better off than you were four years ago?"----,'.
I mean really? Ha Ha! The old fraud!
If US citizens were impressed by Reagan saying this then they have only themselves to blame for the state of their fat society and foolish culture now, and the argument of free speech holds water in this light.
As with the present wars, despite the sleaze floating on top in Washington, it is not the government or law of the USA that is to blame it is the US collective; the US citizen.
Modern advertising is brainwashing. Not only for separate products, but for an unhealthy lifestyle in wide cross-promotions.
Turn off from the constant bombardment of the senses with ads, and the world changes strangely. Nature comes back into direct view. Suddenly the sky shows. People hustling and bustling about seem to be strangely tunneling through reality, with too little laughs.
Advertising for kids is brainwashing plus indoctrination. With only the currently normal exposure, kids leave their sense of themselves behind at a very early age.
In the 1960'ies and 70'ies there was at least a criticism and opposition to the ubiquitousness of ads. Some time during the 1980'ies that died, and now the most the pervasiveness of ads garners are weary shrugs and tired acceptance. People can't even breathe in on the thought of resisting ads. Eyes glaze over in shallow breathing.
Ads keep us floating in an unhealthy trance. They are at the center of the collective consciousness. That's as sick as the mainstream culture, which is killing us and itself with unsustainable practices.
Advertising: public enemy no. 1. It should be heavily regulated, limited and kept at bay. A science of healthy, wholesome, consensus-based (rather than profit-oriented) influencing of the populace toward desirable goals should replace "marketing".
What is particularly distressing, of course, is that organic is the way food used to be produced in a time far gone -- that was the norm. Now, of course, to get organic or to get "free-range" beef, chicken, etc. you have to be fairly well off. For myself I shop the sales at Stop 'n Shop. I have a Wild By Nature right next door -- ripoff city -- it is way above my pay grade, and for people who basically make a little bit above the minimum wage on Long Island, even Stop 'n Shop and their "affordable" organic food would be above the pay grade. That's a lot of people who get to eat crap.
At the same time I am noticing some interesting things. When organic cereals go on sale they sell out fast, especially when the sale is $2.50 a box. When "name brand" cereal goes on sale it doesn't move much faster than when it's not on sale. Every one of those name-brand cereals has high-fructose corn syrup -- even the so-called "healthier" ones.
I've noticed the same thing with a myriad of products. Salad dressings: Ken's new line of salad dressings called Healthy Options has no high-fructose corn syrup in it. Again, when it goes on sale it is sold out, while the stuff on sale with this garbage in it just sits there.
The bad news is that big corporations are now coming out with lines of food called that are "all natural" or state "contains no high fructose corn syrup" and the prices are jacked up compared to their unhealthy counterpart.
One of my favorite labels is reading a box of Nature's Path Organic Cereal (just finished a month-long run of being $2.50 a box at Stop 'n Shop; it was a nice treat while it lasted).
Wouldn't it be nice to go back to a time where the term "organic" didn't have to be used to describe food, when this was the norm for food?
Good God. This is a lot of stuff in one fell swoop. A full Monty. Double barrel blast. Brahms Violin Concerto, third movement, all strings coming at you in one massive crescendo as a perverted Phil Specter wall of sound, alla "There Will Be Blood", thank you Upton Sinclair and Paul Anderson. It had my head spinning for a few minutes. Kudos for the writer. Well done. Who is Raj Patel? It seems he's had this stuff building up inside his head and just waiting to have it burst out with one deafening crack.
Just one off the cuff comment on my part. I do occasionally smoke one or two cigarettes, once every couple of months (used to smoke a pack a day during a divorce but can't anymore because I bike sometimes for 2 or 3 hours running), but I think Joe Camel is kinda of cool (would Sarah say it that way - kinda folksy - in the way my brother, the right wing bonehead, loves to hear her voice).
This is an outstanding article, but the debates between Jimmy Carter and the Gipper were in 1980 which was the year of that presidential contest-- still a great article.
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