Lies of Omission: The Case of the McRib Sandwich

I turned on my radio, spun the dial, thought I’d listen to some news for a while

Grabbed the knob, spun it around, got NPR, here’s what I found.

Real news? Hardly a trace

Just one damn marathon marketplace

The nasdaq is up the dow’s in the cellar

And NPR sold out to Rockefeller.

                                 -Utah Phillips

I've been listening to NPR all of my life. When I hear it I have an autonomic response akin to a feeling of safety or security, like a suckling baby lying trustingly in the arms of my nurturing, adoring mother. The soothing, familiar voices of sensible, moral people placate my anxiety. I crave the sound of those disembodied voices: teaching me, offering me a path of clarity, protecting me from ignorance. NPR has been such a large influence in my life, in fact, that they have contributed to my development as a human being arguably more than my actual parents who, in contrast, basically tossed me to the wolves.

In the last few years, however, I've noticed a significant change in my relationship with NPR. I'm not sure exactly when it began since it was a gradual, insidious change, but lately, instead of the above described reaction that previously characterized my feelings towards it, I've become aware of a creeping hostility and distrust: a feeling of betrayal. It is as though my omniscient trackers of the truth who I rely upon to bring me back fat fruits of wisdom are instead returning from their journey with a product that might look tempting on the surface, but upon further investigation is flavorless and even full of rot.

Whether this bait and switch was always present and I was simply too seduced to notice, or whether it can be traced to the increase in corporate underwriters is a job for a much less lazy person, but there is no doubt that when I turn on NPR I am more likely to hear a piece on a cocktail recipe than I am an in depth analysis of the root causes of rainforest destruction. Rarely, do I hear any real criticism of American imperialism or any serious investigation into the perils of global capitalism. In fact, it appears to me that most reporting on NPR rests upon the a priori notion that the U.S. imperialist agenda and the principles of capitalism are essentially "good". Though there may be some attempt to explore the symptoms, the effects are rarely traced back to the root causes. The honest facade makes the obvious corporate bias even more sinister.

Of course, even if one takes issue with my use of the word imperialism or with my assertion that capitalism is the root cause of many of the world's woes, it should be widely agreed that it is the job of an organization that markets itself as a serious "news source" to perform the important public service of a thorough investigation into all of the forces that shape our world. It is not enough, for instance, to do a quick story on the destruction of the Amazon Rainforest without asking questions about the role of western companies meeting western demands for meat products, metal and lumber.

Let's look at a few concrete examples. A reading of the 2007 Morning Edition story entitled "Unlikely Allies Battle Deforestation in the Amazon" gives the impression that in general, global corporations with just a little bit of pressure from environmentalists are working towards a solution and that the ultimate cause of deforestation in Brazil is entirely the fault of local forces. Another similar example, "Electronics Fuel Congo Conflict" discussing coltan mining in the Congo sounds promising but ultimately barely touches upon the role of western forces and concentrates mainly on local corruption. Furthermore, the searches that I did on these topics did not turn up any more coverage. Each of these transcripts left me feeling hungry; and, damnit, if NPR has done its job I should feel satiated.

Speaking of not feeling satiated, in further defense of my thesis, I have examined NPR's coverage of the icon of American domination and capitalism: McDonald's Restaurants. Though there is no lack of potential material for criticism that includes the negative impact of fast food on health and the environment, the scourge of the low-wage job, the disgusting human/animal/environmental abuses of the meat industry, the presence of heavy metals in fertilizer, marketing drugs (fat and sugar) to children, etc. I find it difficult to find any NPR coverage in which any of these themes is even casually mentioned let alone pursued. Instead, NPR has squandered its coverage of McDonalds upon their attempts to make menu changes to satisfy cultural differences globally, their attempts to improve their image by complying with nutrition labeling and offering healthy choices, or, of course, the incredibly newsworthy adventures of the McRib Sandwich.

In each of these examples, I am not making the case that farmers, warlords, miners, purveyors of corruption, law enforcement, parents, overweight people etc. should not share the blame for the bad things that happen; I'm simply arguing that they don't deserve all of the blame. NPR does not utilize a broad enough lens and doesn't ask the really tough questions or even deign to put America or capitalism under the interrogation light. In all of the above cases, the damages done by global corporations and "first world" life-style demands are either omitted entirely or drastically downplayed. It's as though the NPR position is to sit back behind a glass divider and point out the terrible things in the world but not examine America's complicity or hypocrisy.

A few years back I read John Perkins' wonderful book Confessions of an Economic Hit man. In it, he makes some incredible allegations about the direct involvement of the US government and global corporations in the destruction of the economies of "developing" nations. Either John Perkins is a deranged compulsive liar or a messenger for an extraordinarily disturbing truth, or he's somewhere in the middle, but I couldn't count on NPR to investigate. They'd rather fill me in on Janet Jackson's nipples getting exposed during the half time show at the Super bowl.

Okay, I know there are other sources of news, such as Z magazine, Democracy Now! and Counterpunch, that I rely upon and wish had a broader audience. But NPR is "main stream" and there is absolutely no reason why they can't be just as intrepid. NPR promotes itself as "thorough" and "sincere" and "objective" and claims to provide a "broad perspective"; it should live up to its own description. Besides, even if the American imperialist agenda and global capitalism are forces for good then at least prove it to me by giving me the evidence. NPR simply leaves the question off of the table.

War is Peace

I've made the unsubstantiated observation that as a general rule, Americans dislike having uncomfortable discussions and therefore usually converse about neutral things, such as celebrities, products and pets. To illustrate, I was recently silenced at a party for daring to engage in conversation that was "too controversial" and not "inclusive" enough, even though I was talking about the presidential election. Swallowing my anger along with my next shot of whiskey, and mentally reviewing the long list of things that kill real democracy including complacency, I politely nodded my head to the litany of silly cat stories that followed. Just for the record, I experience joy in the presence of silly cats as much as the next person, but I take this as a given and do not feel the need to waste my precious social time reviewing the time-honored crazy antics of Felis catus. Yes, my cat runs around the house for no reason, too. Yes, it's funny. Now can we talk about politics and religion?

So, it was in this context that I was genuinely surprised whilst in the gym the other day shamelessly eavesdropping on a conversation that actually weighed a few pounds. I mean, maybe not enough to build rippling brain mass, but enough to tone up the ganglia a little. While most of the time I instinctively scramble the unbearable clatter that characterizes the average American conversation, in this particular exchange I began to hear words and phrases that wrestled my slumbering outer liberal into attention; words and phrases so provocative that I even made a special trip to the locker room so I could scribble them down on a paper towel since I can never rely on my disheveled memory. Later, I promptly lost the paper towel since I cannot rely on my disheveled memory. For this reason, I am unable to repeat these words and phrases exactly for you here, but I do remember the most sinister and provocative phrase of them all: "What's wrong with Ward Cleaver?"

Though I'd love to attempt to answer that question, I am trying to converge on a point for which such musings would prove superfluous. Therefore, I will resist the temptation to do so here and instead present to you a general description of this conversation that took place between two gentlemen on stair-steppers. During the conversation, each described himself in one way or another as "conservative". Beginning with the Ward Cleaver comment, the theme of this discussion was the destruction of the american family by the liberal/politically correct lurking among us, a theme that eventually evolved into reflections upon the growing epidemic of wussiness that these gentlemen believed is presently being vectored by overprotective parents to their all too sensitive, spoiled, allergy laden children. Again, in the interest of point convergence, I would like to put aside some of the tasty contradictions inherent in the simultaneous advocacy of these two ideas, and exclusively focus on the second one.

"I grew up in the Vietnam era," the older man said, "kids died. That's just the way it was. You got over it. Kids got beat up in the school yard. That's just the way it was. You got over it. If you didn't like the food you were given, tough, you ate it or you starved. You got over it. That's what made you a man. You didn't talk about it. You just got over it. I heard about this kid who got a pass on reading "To Kill a Mockingbird" because he was 'too sensitive'. I had to read that book when I was in school. I didn't like it, but I got over it!"

So, yeah, I thought, I agree with this guy, to a point. I think reading uncomfortable books improves your mind and playing in the dirt improves your immune system and I, too, have been frustrated by the spoiled nature of some American children when I have sweat dribbling down my face and thirty impatient people to wait on and mom is gently prodding little Samantha to choose between severally equally nutritionless items on the kids menu. This is me thinking: "Samantha, they will all make you hopelessly addicted to fat and sugar for the rest of your life, and Bessie the cow was inhumanely slaughtered just like Wilbur, so really, does it make that much of a difference? And, mom, give her ten seconds and if she can't decide, order her a bowl of broccoli and that'll teach her!"

However, most of the time, when I'm not in basic primitive survival mode like I am at work, I do prefer choice, democracy, kindness, peace, individuality and life to commandments, totalitarianism, cruelty, war, conformity and death.  So, in that regard the wussy movement gives me hope that there may be a trend inching forward in that direction in the small cultural subset of white middle-class suburban America, even if the bond of white bread dough that holds families together is being permanently disrupted by too much communication. 

As I was just about to make this very eloquent statement exactly how you see it here, however, the two men departed with their unchallenged opinions totally INTACT and I was left alone with sixty more minutes on the stair-stepper and an idiot box full of hundreds of nutrtionless yet tempting television choices. Unable to help myself, I turned it on and flicked through the channels in order to do a rough survey on the number of guns I saw. I was now entertaining chicken versus egg, life versus art, man versus woman, and other delightful dichotomies that typically charge through my mind in response to violence on television when suddenly and unexpectedly, a beautiful thought came blasting through, courtesy of the wussiness conversation.

And the Grinch thought of something she hadn't before. Violence, she thought, doesn't come in a store. Violence, she thought, is a little bit more!

Maybe, I thought as a choir of Whos joined in, the wussiness movement in our real lives (us being the small cultural subset of white middle-class america) sucks the warrior instinct out of us and deposits it upon the stories we tell as reflected by our pop culture. Just maybe, though I'm not entirely convinced, but maybe, the increasingly graphic violence in movies, television and video games does not desensitize the humans that feel the need to watch it, but preserves the aggressive instinct in a harmless fantasy bubble. In other words, increasing violence in this venue is a good sign for those of us rooting for a progression towards peace. I never thought I'd say this, but, hooray for Mortal Kombat!

But, of course, this from a person who argued once that increasing divorce rates are not a pernicious sign of the destruction of the institution of marriage, but an auspicious sign of intolerance for unhappiness.

I'm not saying it's true.

The Billboard and The Elephant

Oh, the things I would do if I didn't have to spend most of my time either going to work, at work, or recovering from work and had more money than just enough to get by! Don't get me wrong, the benefits of living on a $30,000/year income under American capitalism do not escape me, it's just that they are tremendously outweighed by all of the disadvantages: the amount of time I spend doing something I hate, the nagging fear that at any moment my life could totally collapse, the nagging fear that when I am old and incapacitated I will be lying in my shit  for hours, my only real wish being that somebody come by and put a pillow between my knees. Not to mention the systemic problems with capitalism: overproduction of waste, stress-related illness, environmental destruction, alienation, the emphasis on the more primitive aspects of our human nature, the destruction of community, income inequality, etc.

I am trying to escape from it, of course, and I have several long-term plans in the works to slowly extricate myself from the traps of mainstream American culture. This is tricky business, since my skin has grown around the straps and I must be careful not to injure myself in the process. More on this later. For now, I wish to fantasize on what I would do if I had a few extra million lying around or if I weren't so painfully shy that I could actually behave like a capitalist and raise the money.

First, I would save the elephants. I have an affinity for all living things and even defend the most hideous life-forms of all such as leeches, infectious organisms, mosquitoes, coakroaches, and humans, but I have a special relationship with the elephant that goes back several months when I was at the St. Louis Zoo for the first time since the whole concept of a zoo disturbs me on some level even though I know all about the great things they do. I think the feeling could be described as love at first sight when one of the adult elephants that was so far off in the distance that I could've squashed its head between my thumb and index finger, suddenly began to charge towards the crowd in a sort of slow, graceful trot with it's ears billowing in the wind. The beauty took my breath away.

"You're crying!" my boyfriend said incredulously as the elephant, who was now right in front of us, raised his trunk up majestically infront of his innocuous face, his incomprehensible size rendering the ballet even more sublime. "Yes," I thought to myself, "I'm in love with this elephant."

I think my boyfriend was a little jealous.

"I am not a man!" the elephant appeared to be yelling, who is arbitrarily a male in this story simply to avoid using the term "it",  "I am an animal!"

So, most of my money and time would go to help elephants and all other similarly threatened living things on our planet. Of course, any effort to alleviate human poverty, ignorance, greed, poor resource utilization and all of the other scurges of our species that either directly or indirectly lead to the destruction of our life-support system would also get my attention.

After that, if I had just a little money left over, I would promote public art. I would buy existing billboards and hire starving artists to paint upon them. That's it. Art not only for art's sake but also for the sake of reminding us all that while commerce matters, it's not the only thing that matters. In fact, I would even argue that while commerce gives us the tools to survive, art makes the effort worthwhile. That's why the art would be on billboards; since billboards are a medium for the marketplace, so placing something upon them with no conceivable monetary benefit would create cognitive dissonance leading to some sort of break in the dull, seamless routine that grinds around in the American middleclass consumer brain.

I remember hearing some anthropologist say on the radio once that Homo sapiens should be renamed Homo manipulans because what really characterizes us is not our knowing stuff but our desire to change stuff. I would take that one step further and say that our most unique diagnostic feature is not only our desire to change stuff, since other animals do this as well, but our desire to change stuff in impractical ways, which is what art is. Art is our special talent. Art is us.

So, on the one hand I'd use my resources to innoculate the world against the scurges of humanity and on the other I'd use my resources to promote our most amazing attribute. Then I'd buy some land and build an intentional community out of yurts and earthships. Then I'd dance, play music, raise bees, grow vegetables, socialize and generally enjoy the fruits of this one fucking life that I have.

But, of course, no time for that. I have to drag myself kicking and screaming to work. No, Bill Clinton, it doesn't give my life purpose.

Dear Hollywood, why do you hate me?

So, here I am at the gym watching television again and catwoman, who is portrayed by a young Halle Berry is beating the crap out of the older villain who is played by Sharon Stone. I watch the entire finale in which Sharon Stone, whose nefarious plan is to unleash a toxic compound upon the sagging, wrinkled faces of sad older women who can't stand the thought of losing their sex appeal, finally falls to her grisly death: the skin on her cheeks cracking to reveal the aged person that she was all along underneath her artificial marble-like skin.

"There it is again!" I think to myself as I pin the example on the schema I've constructed specifically for my casual and biased research into this phenomenon that I like to call "Snow White  Syndrome": the blatant loathing, continuous thrashing and/or outright obliteration of the older woman in Hollywood movies. Though I realize that this is not the only lie that Hollywood tells, it is one that I find isn't often discussed. While the young female is busy kicking ass in order to perpetuate the myth that violence is strength, the older female is either being brutalized, extinguished, or she is simply unpalatable: weak, desperate, hideous, jealous or sad.

For example, while practical, clever, gorgeous, warrior teen Katniss is whipping out her bow and arrow in the Hunger Games, her mother is so emotionally unstable that she is unable to be a parent and her older female escort is a frivolous phony who apparently bathes herself in cover-up. To pull an example from an entirely different generation, Working Girl shows a young, smart, unthreatening female breaking the glass ceiling, but only in the context of replacing her older counterpart who is envious, bitter and cruel. It is also important to note that in each of these movies, the older male is portrayed as kindly, paternal, and in even in cohoots with the younger woman to participate in the scintillating marginalization.

In any event, I guess it wouldn't bother me quite so much if the contagion remained quarantined in the movies. I see the war on the older woman in real life and you know where I see the missles coming from the most? Women. Women who say they don't like women. Women who turn their beautiful faces into expressionless masks because there is so much pressure to worship youth. Older women who engage in persistent self-loathing and repeat disparaging myths about themselves such as "men grow old gracefully and women just grow old". Young women who say they don't care if they turn their skin to leather in a tanning booth because "nobody will want me when I'm older anyway." Never mind the cancer.

It's as though women are telling themselves these things in order to buffer the inevitable blow from their bleak futures as hopeless, lonely Mrs. Robinsons. However, it appears to me that it is less like "being realistic" and more like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The conclusion? In Hollywood, it's still a man's world.  Women are allowed to be strong as long as we are elevating male values of aggression or entertaining male fantasies for sex and nurturing. We can run around in tight leather jumpsuits with guns strapped to our luscious young bodies and we are allowed to be mothers and grandmothers. If we are older, we are allowed to display our power only if it is fueled by a deep jealousy of the younger woman that is replacing us and is eventually destroyed only to reveal the pathetic, weak person who is buried inside. What we are not allowed to be are older women with sex drives and feelings of self-actualization, real confidence and fulfillment.

"Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's more attractive, happier and healthier than ever? Who's feeling like she finally owns herself, finally knows herself, finally kind of likes herself? Who's finding beauty and delight in the complexity of the mind and doesn't really give a rat's ass about the complexion of the skin? Who wouldn't go back to being twenty again unless she were paid enough money to spend her life walking the planet and saving elephants?"

Me, at forty-five. Fuck you, Hollywood.