Sunday, August 21, 2016

Can't Fix Your Brakes

I've been needle dropping the Summer Olympics on TV, not really following anything or anyone and (of course) rooting for Americans even in sports I didn't realize were in the Olympics (beach volleyball; seriously?) or that I don't understand in any way (almost all the rest).

The games (which are deadly earnest at a number of levels for almost everyone involved so 'games' is a truly inappropriate choice of words) cost oodles of billions of dollars to stage and host and broadcast and whatever else we can do with something.


But, in the games' defense, most times they make even MORE money for everyone involved through the magic of advertising. Here in the USA we watch most of the Olympics on TV all brought to us by the usual suspects who pay, and handsomely, for the rights to use the five rings in the various and sundry forms of advertising.


That's why McDonald's is exercising (literally and metaphorically) their sponsorship connection and putting activity trackers in their Happy Meals. Yes, the same meals we have been grazing on for two plus generations and that have helped us become bigger if not better people.


And no good deed, or clever marketing tie-in, goes unpunished. I could have never guessed how many injuries would have been are blamed on the activity tracker if McDonalds hadn't withdrawn it nearly as quickly as they first offered it. I am curious in just how large and long the judicial activity trackers take to light up and burn brightly, sort of like the cherub face of a wee tyke with a fistful of french fries, a mouthful of Big Mac and clutching an ice cream treat.

The last thing we need is to have anyone on a truth squad tell us we're obese and suggests reasons why. We have mirrors and drive-thru's, pilgrim, we sure as hell know why. Hips don't lie.  
bill kenny

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