We’re accustomed to slant in news stories, but this story
about Sen. Clinton and the horrible impact of advertising food to
children is just comical. I was waiting for the story to justify
turning over your children to the state because the parents are too
ignorant to raise them. Oh wait, that would be a public education
story. . .
“People are spending billions and billions of dollars enticing children
basically to be obsessed with food,” she said. “These foods are almost
universally unhealthy.” Clinton has offered legislation to study the
effects of the “advertising-saturated, media-intense” world on kids.
Now, what Sen. Clinton said is bad enough, that essentially we need
to spend government money to reign in advertising. But the
“opposing” viewpoint is equally distressing (in the story).
Robert Thompson, a professor of pop culture at Syracuse University,
said Clinton and other politicians like to attack advertising because
it’s easier than trying to ban bad food products or fund broad
education programs.
“To go after advertising really makes no sense,” he said. “It’s sort of a backdoor tack, but it’s the safer one politically.”
What is disturbing here is that government control is
the foregone conclusion, either we go after the advertisers or we go
after the producers of unhealthy food. Nowhere is there a
discussion about the responsibility of the parents. Our children
are simply mind-numbed robots owned by food produces and advertisers
who must be stopped. I was not aware that it was politically
safer to go after advertisers than food producers.
