TheAgitator.com
More on the Morgan
Monday, May 31st, 2004“People who go into these restaurants need to realize what they’re putting into their mouths.”
That’s what Supersize Me fraud Morgan Spurlock said upon winning the directing prize at Sundance.
Delve a little into Spurlock’s past, however, and you’ll find a man willing to exploit society’s most vulnerable people to make a cheap buck and get some cheap fame — usually by having them put odd things into their mouths.
He started out with a personal website called TheCon.com (now, curiously, wiped completely clean from the web — even from the Internet archive). There, Spurlock would pay homeless people and poor folks $100 or more to, for example, chew and swallow dog feces. He’d then charge his website users to watch video feeds of the stunts.
From there, Spurlock moved to MTV, where his short-lived show “I Bet You Will” continued with the theme, paying one man to eat an entire jar of mayonaise, for example. One woman cut her own hair, mixed it up with butter, then ate the entire mixture.
Now Spurlock gets famous slamming McDonald’s for selling willing consumers a product he feels is too unhealthy to put into their bodies.
Spurlock has been approached several times to do on-air debates with his critics. He always refuses. In fact, he won’t even do a show when a critic is to appear directly before or after him.
Fortunately, CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo nailed him the other day in what Spurlock obviously thought would be a fluff interview.
My favorite Morgon Spurlock quote, from when he was asked if he feels guilty for paying contestants to eat gross things on his previous MTV show:
“No way. Everybody knows what they’re getting into. Everybody has a good time. If somebody walks by and doesn’t enjoy it, hey, it’s a free country. Just keep on walking, man.”
How can anyone defend his film when he gives interviews like that?
I don’t want to slam on anyone who has a genuine stutter, but this guy sounds (ok, reads) like a complete nincompoop.
How does one tow a tough road, after all? Or even an easy road?
It’s tough row to hoe you farking moron.
I want to make a documentary where I eat at Morton’s of Chicago every day, three meals a day. I would eat some sort of red meat for three meals a day, watch my weight balloon, cholesterol skyrocket, and wallet evaporate. When I released the medical results of such a diet in conjunction with my bank statements I would really be a hero to the left. Not only would my health deteriorate, but I’d be reduced to eating at McDonald’s every day because I would have no more money left.
Glassman is a hack. I saw the same show, and Bartiromo (or it may have been another show) asked him about lawsuits. His response: He doesn’t think lawsuits are the right thing to do. He thinks that it’s important that “people make smarter choices about what they eat and exercise more.”
Now, of course, that was right after he claimed that 7-11 had a responsibility for selling Big Gulps because “people will buy what you sell them” (Keynes would be proud). The point is, this guy Spurlock is a hack, but by opposing him with hackery a la Glassman and Whaley, our side looks like hacks, too.
Maria Bartiromo Rocks
I have a longstanding crush on CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo. During the dotcom boom I thought I was going to meet her on three occasions, but each time was a near-miss. (Granted, it was a busy couple of years for her.)…
My interest peaked with the mention of Maria Bartiromo. She’s got that Joizey Italian thing going on. Suffice to say, ‘it’s a good thing’.
Some schmuck who eats the same crap for 30 days just proves that he is a schmuck, nothing else. Did I spell schmuck correctly? Perhaps I should have went with prick.
:)
Here’s the single most important line anyone who watches this movie needs to hear:
“He could have eaten 5,000 calories at the best health-food restaurant in New York and suffered the same consequences.”
Exactly. If your body takes in 5000 cals/day, and only burns 1000, then YOU WILL GAIN WEIGHT. If Spur[ious]lock was the least bit objective, he would have also done a sequel in which he eats 5000 cals worth of healthy food, with zero physical activity, and then we’d see what McD’s is about.
It’s like doing a drug experiment without a control group. The results don’t mean one fucking thing if you don’t have a control group to compare it to.
The sad thing is that this jagoff is getting rich from this scam, no doubt about it.
Super-Size this, bitch Part 2.
I had a conversation this weekend with co-blogger Answerman in which he informed me he’d seen the movie Super-Size Me. He knew it would be of interest to me as I’ve blogged about it in the past. You can easily imagine my surprise, then, when he infor…
Sounds like Spurlock is just cashing in on the paternalistic snob crowd’s latest crusade. He’s found an market and he’s giving them the entertainment product they want, and making himself a few million in the process. Good for him.