Morgan Spurlock, who made a film about getting fat on McDonald’s food, was asked to speak at a high school health fair. His profanity-laden speech included ethnic jokes and jibes at retarded students, reports AP.
Speaking at Hatboro-Horsham High School’s first-ever health fair, Morgan Spurlock joked about the intelligence of McDonald’s employees, about “retarded kids in the back wearing helmets” and teachers smoking pot in the balcony.
There were special education students sitting in the back row till teachers led them out.
“The greatest lesson those kids learned today was the importance of free speech,” Spurlock said.
Tom Elia replies: What an Idiot. Yes, that says it for me too.
Update: Here’s a letter of explanation from Spurlock with comments from mostly unimpressed people.
Profanity-laden? Ethnic jokes? I would think an ex-journalist might show a little more restraint and perhaps seek out a few more facts before inflating what already appears to be a bit of tantalizing sensationalism brought to us by the ever so objective Associated Press, in whose article, or at least the article that appears on the link in your post, I fail to see any references to “ethnic jokes”.
Your hyperbole aside, Spurlock responds here: http://blogs.indiewire.com/morganspurlock/archives/007620.html#comments
Perhaps the AP reporter bent the facts a bit, or misheard the truth. Perhaps Spurlock is full of it and his apology is a ruse. The only people who
actually know were in that room, which I’m sure didn’t include that reporter. I just find it funny that a former member of the media establishment such as yourself who, among all people, should know that you can’t believe everything you read, apparently does. Maybe it suits your purposes, I don’t know.
The film Spurlock produced, by the way, was about much more than “getting fat on McDonald’s food” as you so succintly, and cleverly!, put it. It in fact was a flawed, yet interesting, dissection of the damaging health effects related to the American obsession with fast food. I guess you didn’t know that. Or maybe your blog is intended to be a propaganda machine. Or maybe your a major stockholder of McCorp. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion, of course, but you may want to reconsider presenting it as truth.
As my aunt Didi used to say, sorry don’t shuck no oysters.
I read the pathetic “apology” and the only apology still owed is by the administration for subjecting the students to such a worthless non-entity. As has been demonstrated, you can order meals at McDonalds that do not make you gain weight. If you oppose the heavier food, what do you say to the laborer who requires 4 or 5K calories a day? Do it with salads?
I guess you didn’t know that. Or maybe your blog is intended to be a propaganda machine. Or maybe your a major stockholder of McCorp. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion, of course, but you may want to reconsider presenting it as truth.
I’m sorry, but the irony of someone walking onto a blog to rail at the blog’s owner about her inaccuracies and accusations while blathering such a wild stream of completely baseless accusations herself is just priceless.
What comes out of the woodwork to defend this self-promoting Spurlock character never ceases to amaze me.
ElizabethBennet wrote:
What comes out of the woodwork to defend this self-promoting Spurlock character never ceases to amaze me.
It shouldn’t. Micheal Moore’s proven that there’s quite a lush living to be made catering to the insatiable appetite of the arrogant unremarkable for communal opportunities to sneer at their inferiors. Moore made his debut pretending to empathize with the sturdy, blue-collar workers he despises and Spurlock makes his debut pretending to give a damn about the eating habits of people he despises.
In both cases you have thin-stretched rationalizations to provide some cover for what are nothing more then the intellectual equivalent of what Spurlock and his audience see when they view a Big Mac: quick, convenient, filling, cheap and a golden opportunity to make a quick buck telling people what they want to hear.
It shouldn’t.
You’re probably right, but when I first heard about “The Fast Food Nation” experiment, I assumed that there must be something more to it than the summary copy revealed. Who could possibly get rich off pointing out that if you ate nothing but McDonald’s most fat-dripping hamburgers and fries for weeks you’d gain some weight? But then I read the book and realized that this was the totality of the point.
Even the poorest members of our society are daily bombarded with exhortations to eat more vegetables. Even if they weren’t, is it likely that they’d pick up this Spurlock creature’s book in the local Borders and realize the supposed error of their ways? I guess he reached his target audience (self-righteous members of the upper middle class with gym memberships and Whole Foods shopping bags in tow), but to represent himself as if he’s out for the good of the people, the good of the poor, or anyone’s good but his own, is just laughably transparent to anyone with half a functioning brain. If he wants to scrutinize anyone’s marketing plan for almost-lies and near-trickery, perhaps scrutiny really ought to start at home.
Ajarn Baa,
I visited your Blog and I like it. I don’t agree with you about quite a few things but I like the different perspective.
Thanks for posting Spurlock’s explanation. After reading the explanation Spurlock comes off even worse in my book. If you think his explanation is adequate then I can see why you would like Spurlock. He comes across as very immature and silly. Of course, on your Blog you come across as fairly young and immature as well so we have different perspectives there as well. The young and immature remark is not meant negatively by the way. Back in my immature days I thought I could change the world and life was a lot more intense. Those of us who are more mature (old and burned out) often times forget how much fun if was to rebel against authority.
Best wishes,
A few examples a items in his explanation I found objectionable:
[i]One student even said to me, “you didn’t say anything that we aren’t going to hear later on TV,” and that was my sole intent.[/i]
What an odd thing for a student to say right after a speech. Does anyone believe that a student really said this? Think about it, you are a student and after a presentation you feel compelled to go up to the speaker and say “You know, you didn’t say anything I would not have heard on TV anyway!” Was that suppose to be a complement?
[i]The Superintendent said to me backstage that the only words he had problems with were the “F-Bombs,” (of which there were only two) so perhaps I should have toned down even those two uses, but as another student told me, it’s nothing they hadn’t heard before.[/i]
Oh well, he used the “F-Bomb” just twice so I guess it is no big deal. Even in an adult work area the F-Bomb is not acceptable. Anyone using such language in most work areas would be in danger of being fired. I bet if any McDonald’s employees used the “F-Bomb” around the customers repeatedly they would be fired.
ElizabethBennet wrote:
If he wants to scrutinize anyone’s marketing plan for almost-lies and near-trickery, perhaps scrutiny really ought to start at home.
You were right on target with “self-righteous members of the upper middle class with gym memberships and Whole Foods shopping bags in tow” but those folks aren’t stupid. They have at least half a mind. Probably more. What they also have is a need to demonstrate and have affirmed, their superiority. Mr. Spurlock provides that opportunity and affirmation without any exertion and no risk. Not a bad deal for the price of a movie ticket.
They’re all smart, sensitive, environmentally-aware, preceptive, attractive, tasteful, tolerant and anxious to make it known and have it confirmed. But don’t bother asking them if they believe themselves to be smart, sensitive, blah, blah, blah. Answering “yes” is conceit, a fault, and answering “no” isn’t true. It’s just self-evident to anyone else who’s smart, sensitive, blah, blah, blah.
“The greatest lesson those kids learned today was the importance of free speech,” Spurlock said
They learned that free speech is a wonderful device, because its users give away their true character. In this case, that of an insensitive idiot.
Nobody forces anyone to eat at McDonalds. Nobody forces anyone to shop at their local supermarket for bread, meat, and condiments, and whip together a tasty nutritious sandwich for a fraction of the price of a McDonalds burger.
There are retards, and there are retards.
I have real experience with people with cognitive disabilities such as Down’s Syndrome or Cerebral Palsy. Most of these people are fine citizens, responsible and self-reliant to the best of their ability.
There are also people with average intelligence (or even above average) who are terribly irresponsible and immoral, while expecting others to be monk-like paragons of “personal responsibility”. They seem unable to mind their own business, mainly because they have no business of their own to mind. These kind of people refuse to think, are afraid of thinking, even though they are perfectly capable.
Injustice comes when the first group is tarred with the same brush as the second.
one of Spurlock’s “apology” comments that struck me: his protest that “I was only making a joke at the teachers’ expense [the pot-smoking joke] to amuse the students”
yeah, like some of those students don’t need more reason to treat their teachers with disrespect. Now they will figure that because a celebrity made the crack, it’s cool and okay for them to do similarly.
and the whole “retard” crack - I teach a Youth Group at church that has a wide range of people in it. A regular insult - particularly hurled at the kids who are in “special ed” or who are a little “slower” is “retard.” I’ve worked and talked and explained until I’m weary and heartsore and almost on the verge of quitting the group altogether how it’s unkind and not fair to characterize people that way. So it frustrates me to see a “celebrity” who is brought in to speak to school students basically giving a stamp of approval to that usage.
thanks, Mr. Spurlock, for contributing to the undoing of probably years of parent/teacher/coach/youth group leader work to try to encourage kids to treat one another with respect. I sure appreciate it.
Spurlock in an ideological fool who never grew up… a man stuck in his college years who gained a bit of fame for a really stupid movie. Did anyone see the serving sizes he was eating? He had 2-3 sandwiches plus fries, a milkshake, dessert, and soda. Who routinely eats to the point of vomiting as Spurlock did? Spurlock’s prank was on par with those done on the MTV show Jackass, just less entertaining.
Is it free speech if you get paid for it?
Supersub wrote:
Spurlock in an ideological fool who never grew up
Yeah? I wouldn’t want to compare my net worth to his so who’s the fool?
What he is, like his mentor Micheal Moore, is a capitalist. He sees the opportunity to make an honest profit and does. His product is an inexpensive, no-effort opportunity to feel smart.
Think of the two of them as the intellectual equivalent of a carnival operator.
No one who rides a roller coaster is really frightened of being smashed to pieces in a high speed collision. But you get, for relatively little money, the adrenaline rush attendent with doing something really dangerous. You get to enjoy the sensations attendant with danger without the danger.
Mr. Spurlock is selling the opportunity to feel tasteful, refined, intelligent without the necessity of demonstrating any of those qualities. Obviously, a great buy.
Hell, I’d better quit. I’m talking myself into starting a fan club when what I feel like doing is warming up kettle of tar and ripping open a pillow.