A U.S. consumer group is suing McDonald's over its Happy Meals. False advertising, you say? “These don't make me happy! They make me full but only for a short time, and full of self-hate!” No, it's for the toys they give away. California has already passed a law against offering free toys with any meal that doesn't reach a nutritional standard, in recognition of just how dense and suggestible is your average child diner.
It's interesting to look at the language used in this lawsuit, brought by the Center for Science in the Public Interest: “McDonald's is the stranger in the playground handing out candy to children. It's a creepy and predatory practice that warrants an injunction. McDonald's marketing has the effect of conscripting America's children into an unpaid drone army of word—of—mouth marketers, causing them to nag their parents to bring them to McDonald's.” What a subtle audacity, calling Ronald McDonald a paedophile. In a lawsuit. I thought you were only allowed to say that on Facebook.
More remarkable is the radicalism underpinning this: the idea that large corporations should approach customers in a responsible way, thinking not only of profit but of the nutritional needs of a family, as well as its budget and interior dynamics.
When we talk about the need for corporate responsibility here in the U.K., we are referring to major transgressions against humankind: toxic spillage, sweat shops in Bangladesh, carbon footprints. In America, there is provision under law for enforcing — or at least demanding — not just a duty of care not to kill anybody but the kind of responsibility you might ask from a reasonable adult. Please don't just profiteer. Also think of the tubby, plastic—ridden society you create.
This sounds like a good thing, doesn't it? And yet the landscape it creates is not necessarily one we'd emulate.
Take, as an example, the drinks industry's response to foetal alcohol syndrome. In the 1970s, when alcohol was first identified as a hazard to a foetus, the industry naturally rejected it wholesale (mainly on the basis that pregnant women had been drinking for centuries). By 1988 the industry had willingly submitted to warning signs on every bottle — not “don't drink too much”, but a red line through a pregnant woman, effectively “don't drink at all, you pregger”.
The spur to this was a case brought against Jim Beam, on behalf of a child with foetal alcohol syndrome, the year before. (James A. Beam actually escaped liability, when the mood of the court turned against the mother, but it was a tense time for the drinks industry; the story is told in Janet Golden's book, Message in a Bottle [Harvard University Press]).
The warnings are basically there to protect the sellers of alcohol from litigation. This is great for the industry but bad for the consumer. In an effort to shut down any possibility of legal recourse it elevates into a medical truism the idea that any amount of alcohol, however small, could cause foetal damage (this is not true). In doing so, it creates the suspicion that the country is crawling with women seeking to carouse at the expense of their unborn child — and this idea has spawned appalling legislation. Five states in the U.S. authorise the civil commitment of a woman who is suspected of using alcohol during her pregnancy: 33 states require the reporting of suspected alcohol use. Rates of foetal alcohol syndrome have, predictably, stayed pretty static throughout: in response to warnings, light drinkers stop drinking, and alcoholics remain alcoholic.
Never minding the gender politics of all this — and Golden points to strongly racist imagery and rhetoric in the foetal alcohol syndrome debate — just look at the route. That case against the industry was the hinge moment, just as it was in the smoking debate, which was bitterly fought in class actions against Big Tobacco first, then passed through state law like a slippery pig.
The timing isn't always exact. A class action might be inspired by one in a single state, as is apparently the case in the People v Badly Made Shrek Toy.
But there is certainly an alternative political landscape in America, where arguments are made that are much more radical than anything you hear from mainstream politicians. Barack Obama sounds great, but he does not sound like a Marxist. You cannot imagine him accusing a fast—food giant of “conscripting” a child. The narrative is rarely a straightforward David v Goliath, where a little guy sets his all against a huge company and wins. That does sometimes happen, but there's baggage: a trail of on—the—hop law—making that can make the individual weaker even though it was formulated in response to an individual's case against a faceless corporation.
This sheds light on so much that is peculiar to the U.S., not just Americans' famous litigiousness and risk—aversion but their emotional relationship with the court process, the vexed attitude to lawyers, who are shysters one minute and crusaders the next. Courts do more than test the law. They provide a political platform, a sense of collective action, a pressure valve to let off some of the howling frustration of being a drone to Ronald McDonald's King Bee.
Having said all that, there is another reason why I can't see anyone bringing a case against McDonald's here in Britain: if you were going to bring a class action against plastic tat, you would definitely start with CBeebies magazine (BBC magazine for young children). — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2010
