Sexy Friday – 20251121

TGIF! I’m on vacation so let’s get this over with. Onto the filler!

Word Count Filler Time

Let’s talk about were I’m going for breakfast this morning. That’s right, shame breakfast at McDonalds!

Back in the early 90s (alright fine, it was 1991) a couple of vegetarian hippies in England started handing out pamphlets outside a McDonald’s establishment. As you can imagine, those pamphlets were not kind to McDonalds as the title of them were “What’s Wrong With McDonald’s? Everything They Don’t Want You To Know.”  They also coined the wonderful words of McDollars, McGreedy, McCancer, and McMurder. The allegations in the six page pamphlet included promoting unhealthy diets, rainforest destruction due to cattle raising, starvation in developing countries, union busting, child exploitation,  and animal abuse.

McDonald’s was of course less than amused by this. So they sued those hippies. In England since libel laws there make it much easier to win such a case. In PR circles, this turned out to be what they call a blunder. The issue is that those hippies were unemployed and quite broke but they still fought the lawsuit by representing themselves. And this court case dragged on. The suit was filed in 1991, wasn’t heard until 1994, and wasn’t over until 1997. That’s 6 whole years those pamphlets were in the news.

Of course, McDonald’s won the case. They were awarded $94,000 which they would never get since the defendants were unemployed and broke. And the spent an estimated $16 million for this disaster. Even worse, the judge ruled against them on some of the arguments:

• Their advertising did exploit children
• Their advertising was falsely claiming their food was nutrious
• They risked the health of their long term customers
• Were responsible for cruelty to animals
• Were strongly antipathetic to unions
• They pay their workers low wages

Later, in 1999, a court of appeals ruled that a regular McDonald’s diet is linked to heart disease. Maybe I’ll find somewhere else for breakfast.

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Sexy Time

Enjoy the weekend, folks! Alright, now let’s get to the comments!