2008 Woodie Awards
Learning to shoulder societies burdens
Issue date: 11/18/08 Section: Opinion
Americans have been known for a lot of things over the years. We've been innovative and proud, rebellious and tough - the list goes on - but lately, we've picked up another, less flattering description: We're a nation of whiners, of everybody else but us.
Got a problem? Blame someone else.
That's the new American way. That's how we do things, all of us, and the irony of an editorial board whining about everybody else's whining isn't lost on us but there's something here and we need to talk it out.
Exhibit A, for example: McDonald's, the baddest bully in the schoolyard.
Let's blame McDonald's for making us fat because, surely, they're what made us one of ,if not the most, obese nations in the world and the average American isn't making an informed decision about what's in the food we eat.
It's as if no one knows the danger of red meat cooked in its own grease and served on carbohydrate-rich white bread, aided and abetted by the salt fairy's favorite French fries (also cooked in a big vat of grease) and washed down with a sugar-heavy caffeine monster like Coke - as if there were no such things as "Sesame Street" or junior high health class.
Yet here we go, dragging our troubles into an already flooded legal system with lawsuits about broken scales and hot coffee, as if Ronald McDonald and his scary purple sidekick were holding us all at gunpoint and forcing their poison down our throats, clapping hands, singing songs and giggling as our waists soon become wastes.
Here's news, people, but nobody's stopping us from ordering a salad or knowing that all the cheese and dressing we're piling on top is sort of defeating the purpose of ordering a salad in the first place. And God forbid we understand how an exercise bike works if there's a cushy, multi-million dollar settlement on the horizon, because that fortune tastes almost as good as the burgers we're going to buy with it.
Exhibit B: the media.
Cosmo makes us feel ugly so we eat crackers and celery, and we start throwing up because that ribcage look is so "in," and we feel like our own skin is against us and that super miracle fad diet is the only cure for our slovenly mortal appearance.
Got a problem? Blame someone else.
That's the new American way. That's how we do things, all of us, and the irony of an editorial board whining about everybody else's whining isn't lost on us but there's something here and we need to talk it out.
Exhibit A, for example: McDonald's, the baddest bully in the schoolyard.
Let's blame McDonald's for making us fat because, surely, they're what made us one of ,if not the most, obese nations in the world and the average American isn't making an informed decision about what's in the food we eat.
It's as if no one knows the danger of red meat cooked in its own grease and served on carbohydrate-rich white bread, aided and abetted by the salt fairy's favorite French fries (also cooked in a big vat of grease) and washed down with a sugar-heavy caffeine monster like Coke - as if there were no such things as "Sesame Street" or junior high health class.
Yet here we go, dragging our troubles into an already flooded legal system with lawsuits about broken scales and hot coffee, as if Ronald McDonald and his scary purple sidekick were holding us all at gunpoint and forcing their poison down our throats, clapping hands, singing songs and giggling as our waists soon become wastes.
Here's news, people, but nobody's stopping us from ordering a salad or knowing that all the cheese and dressing we're piling on top is sort of defeating the purpose of ordering a salad in the first place. And God forbid we understand how an exercise bike works if there's a cushy, multi-million dollar settlement on the horizon, because that fortune tastes almost as good as the burgers we're going to buy with it.
Exhibit B: the media.
Cosmo makes us feel ugly so we eat crackers and celery, and we start throwing up because that ribcage look is so "in," and we feel like our own skin is against us and that super miracle fad diet is the only cure for our slovenly mortal appearance.
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