Supersize Me

Recently I watched “Super High Me”, Doug Benson’s marijuana version of Morgan Spurlock’s documentary on McDonalds and fast food.  Naturally, I followed it up with Spurlock’s original, “Supersize Me”. 

 Basic premise:  Spurlock spent 30 days eating nothing but McDonald’s, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  Periodically he went to doctors and had himself weighed and tested.  He gained 20-30 lbs and his health went down dramatically; by one analysis, his liver took as much damage as a heavy drinker’s.  His wife complained that his energy and sexual performance were noticeably worse.  All the doctors advised him to stop eating fast food immediately.  He did enjoy the food, but not its impact on him.

 In addition to his own experiences, he talks about the huge pervasiveness of McDonald’s, the vast advertising campaigns of that company and all the others selling similar foods – compared to the miniscule advertising budgets for more healthy foods -  and the degree to which obesity is a problem in the country, and argued a direct correlation between that and the fast food industry.  This even included a discussion of the (unsuccessful) lawsuit against McDonald’s for causing obesity.

 But his methodology was completely bogus.  According to Spurlock, McDonald’s research classifies its “super heavy consumers” as visiting the restaurant 5-7 times a week, which is the most hardcore 22% of its customer base.  Assuming 3 meals a day, seven days a week, that’s 7 out of 21 meals, or 33%.  By its own calculations, McDonalds believes its most faithful customers are getting no more than a third of their food from the chain.  But Spurlock restricted himself exclusively to McDonalds – he ate breakfast, lunch and dinner there 7 days a week for 30 days, with absolutely no other source of food.  This is 21 visits a week, or 3 times the frequency of even the “super heavy consumers”.  No wonder he had health issues.

 You could do the same with wine or pizza.  Imagine that for 30 days, your only source of liquid was wine.  You’d be drunk most of the time, possibly get DUIs, get fired from your job, and do serious damage to your liver.  Or if your sole source of food was pizza, you’d expect to get scurvy at the least, as pizza has no vitamin C.  Neither of which shows that wine or pizza can’t be part of a nutritious diet – if neither is the SOLE element of your diet.  Come to think of it, there’s probably not ONE food which is so healthy, that you could live on that food alone to the exclusion of all others.  Whether it be fruits, vegetables, meats, fish, carbohydrates, or whatever, you’d be missing something and suffering accordingly.  So what did Spurlock’s experiment prove?  Actually, absolutely nothing.  He endangered his life and health, and yet didn’t prove anything.

 What does McDonald’s do?  From the very beginning, they have been, and are, a “burger joint”.  A burger is one particular type of food consumed at certain times by certain people.  Mr. Big Mac guy – apparently a big John Lennon fan – seems to be exception that proves the rule.  I’m not aware that McDonald’s has ever marketed itself as a healthy source of 100% of our nutritional needs – as opposed to a burger place you can hop off to for a burger every now and then.   A large supermarket, on the other hand, could make that claim.  Whether it be fruits, vegetables, meats, poultry, fish, breads, juices, milk, etc. theoretically such an establishment carries a varied enough selection to allow someone to build a healthy diet eating and drinking exclusively what that store carries.  McDonald’s has made no such claims, nor would I expect it to – nor should Spurlock expect to, or claim to.  This is the logical fallacy known as the “straw man attack”, where you knock down an obviously spurious claim which you attribute to your opponent in order to discredit him. 

 To add to the dishonesty of this, of course Spurlock uses the Michael Moore technique of “attempting” (without success) to contact the corporate spokesdroid, who of course refuses to return his phone calls.  Why should they?  This documentary had one sole purpose:  to crucify McDonald’s.  This was not a good faith analysis of the benefits, merits, and risks of the chain.  Spurlock was out to discredit and embarrass the company.  Any participation by a McDonald’s press agent would have been totally under Spurlock’s control to warp, twist, take out of context, or – and this is McDonald’s best case scenario if its spokesdroid said 100% the right things, none of which could be twisted out of context and used against them – simply ignored.    So why help Spurlock make its case?  Why give “the sanction of the victim”?  Why give him credibility?  And since this documentary was clearly biased against McDonald’s, why count it against them that they refused to show up at their own lynching?   Far from “hiding anything” this merely shows that someone at McDonald’s understands how to handle punks like this clown.

 Both Spurlock and Schlosser (in Fast Food Nation) put heavy emphasis on McDonald’s heavy marketing towards children.  Ronald McDonald, Grimace, Hamburglar, Mayor McCheese, etc., the Happy Meals with the free toys inside, the playgrounds, etc. all clearly appeal to, and are marketed at, children.  The idea is that children will bug their parents to go to McDonald’s, and the parents will be powerless to tell their children “NO”, or even “not today”.  But so what?  Whether for adults, or children, McDonald’s has never advocated or claim that its food be the sole source of nutrition for anyone.  This argument on Spurlock’s part puts too much emphasis on the children and not enough credit to parents for any discipline or self-control.  What we’re left with is yet another “the children!” (insincere weeping and wailing) irrational plea, instead of a truly coherent argument. 

 Plus, Spurlock was vague about how much McDonald’s he had been consuming before the experiment began, making his “control” questionable at best.  Since no one relies exclusively on McDonald’s for food, a more appropriate and meaningful experiment would have been to eat there ONE meal a day, for 30 days.  This would approximate the diet of the super heavy McDonalds’ customers.  Note “heavy” is my word, referring to the frequency, not necessarily the obesity, of the customers.

 Finally, and this is what differentiates fast food from tobacco, is that nowhere is it proven that fast food is addictive.  Does it taste good?  Definitely.  As Eric Schlosser notes, the food is scientifically designed, after extensive research, to taste good.  Why would we eat it if it didn’t taste good?  One of the Judge Dredd cartoons, back in the 2000 AD magazine, concerned “Umpty Candy”, a candy which was addictive solely due to its flavor and not any chemical dependency.  Perhaps an extreme, fictional example.

 As for fast food “causing” obesity, Spurlock played fast and loose.  A survey of nutritionists revealed that the vast majority believed that fast food played some role in America’s obesity problem. But what I didn’t hear was anyone – at least not a professional - saying fast food “caused” obesity; the obvious exceptions were the advocates and attorneys with vested pecuniary interests in making those arguments, and Spurlock himself.  There is a subtle distinction between saying A is a “factor” in causing B, and saying that A caused B.  This is the “necessary vs. sufficient” fallacy.  It is “necessary” that my car has gas in the tank to run.  But that doesn’t mean that having a full tank of gas will allow my car to run, is “sufficient”, if something else is wrong. 

 Let’s face it: there are a lot of overweight people in the US.  But it’s unreasonable to assume that 100% of them have simply flat out refused to go on any sort of diet or give up fast food when told to do so by their doctor or weight loss specialist.   Logic suggests that an appreciable percentage of them – maybe not a majority, certainly, but more than a nominal minority – have gone on diets and abstained from fast food.  Yet they are still overweight.  So while fast food probably has some role in promoting obesity, it cannot be the only factor.  And if it’s not the only factor, it can’t be said to “cause” obesity.

 So what we’re left with is:  McDonald’s food is delicious, but can be toxic if that’s ALL you eat.  You could say that about many things.  Does that mean we should ban them all?  Taken to its extreme, the arguments made by Spurlock and Schlosser would dictate that fast food, as a whole, should be banned, and that some central bureaucracy should dictate our diets to consist solely of bland, healthy foods with no concern about whether it tastes good or not.  Spurlock specifically did not advocate anything along the lines of “please exercise restraint in eating this food.  Once in awhile is OK, but not every day.”  His message was:  DON’T EAT THIS CRAP. 

 I used to eat fast food all the time.  I ate it without any concern about specifically limiting my diet or frequency.  Every Lent I’d typically remove fast food from my diet – which works out to be 6 weeks.  Starting in 1995, I changed my focus, and have it since then.  In general I keep my consumption of McDonald’s, or any other type of “fast food” down to about once or twice a week.   Roy Rogers, Chipotle, Firehouse and Wendy’s are my preferences these days anyway.  But ultimately it’s a matter of deciding, “NO, I am NOT going to eat at McDonald’s.”  As parents, it’s telling your children, “NO, we are not going to eat at McDonalds.”  I wouldn’t argue for a complete boycott, more like an intelligent rationing: we will go once a week, once a month, whatever is most appropriate, based on individual choice.  Last I checked, it’s a free country.

Fast Food Revisited

Eric Schlosser obviously has his own opinion of fast food – and I have mine.  I don’t eat nearly as much of it these days as I used to – and only abstain completely during Lent, a particularly onerous sacrifice which makes Easter Sunday that much more meaningful – but I still love much of it.

 Chipotle.  When it first came out, I initially shunned this place as pretentious, although the first one I saw open was only two blocks from my apartment.  It is, very much, an upscale Taco Bell, but much more than that.  Rather than Taco Bell, which slaps your taco, burrito or chalupa in the back, out of your sight and control, according to a predetermined formula, with Chipotle it’s made right in front of you to your exact specifications, so no one can sneeze, piss, or spit into your taco without your knowledge (unless you ask them to).  And the ingredients taste like normal, real food (which can’t be said for Taco Bell), no headless chickens or cannibal cows.  Once I discovered Chipotle and its steak soft tacos, it was ADIOS Taco Bell.  Incidentally, I can’t seem to enjoy the various copycat upscale competitors, Moe’s Southwest Grill, California Tortilla, Baja Mexican, Baja Fresh, etc.  They all seem like bad imitations, no matter how hard they try, though they do taste more wholesome than Taco Bell.  Remarkably, I’ve never seen ANY TV ads for Chipotle.  They’re no longer owned by McDonald’s, for those of you who do the “who owns who so we can boycott them” analysis.  Given the Mayan motif in many of the stores, an “Apocalyptica” tie-in might have been appropriate, if Chipotle ever went for such things.

 Taco Bell.  As noted above, I used to like this place, until Chipotle showed up.  The steak quesadillas are good, but not much else.  The stuff tastes machine-like, plastic, and fake, more so than any other chain.  Blah.  Does anyone miss “Yo Queiro Taco Bell” with the live-action Ren?  They must have the same R&D dept as Pizza Hut (see below).

 Roy Rogers.  Before Chipotle, this was my favorite, so much so that we used to call it “The Temple.”  Fortunately McDonald’s hasn’t killed all of them, so I can enjoy a huge, juicy roast beef sandwich (on a Kaiser roll!!) in Frederick, Leesburg or Franconia.  And the fries, cut so damn big, are equally irresistible.  Sorry, but Hardee’s and Arby’s don’t cut it; the roast beef tastes like ham and they ruin it with a sesame seed bun – leave that for the burgers, you clueless dumbasses.  The curly fries are the only things going for them.  I don’t think I ever saw Roy Rogers himself in person in any of the places, but he did show up in the ads.  The first Roy’s opened in 1968 at Bailey’s Crossroads, Falls Church, Virginia (I’ve actually eaten there, and now it’s a McDonald’s…of course.  Someone from Roy’s should buy the first McDonald’s in San Bernadino, California, if it’s still there, and turn it into a Roy’s – perhaps the current owners, the Plamondons, will tackle that sensitive operation).  The largest fast food location in the world was the Roy’s at the Stamp Union at the University of Maryland, College Park – if only because the eating area also doubled as the eating area for the University’s own Stamp Union eateries.  My sole fast food employment experience, all six nasty weeks of it, were at the Stamp Union eateries (which is another story….).  There are still a few Roy’s at the rest areas on the New Jersey Turnpike.

 McDonald’s.  “Evil Clown”, as we began calling them after they bought out Roy’s and started shutting them down or converting them into yet MORE McDonald’s (as if there weren’t enough already).  I’m ambivalent about McDonald’s.  I like the McNuggets and Selects, but I would never touch a Big Mac or a Quarter Pounder.  I really hate complex tastes, so any kind of burger where they add in everything but the kitchen sink – particularly mustard, mayo, pickles, etc. – really stinks.  If I want a burger, I’ll go to Fuddruckers and get a huge, well-made burger that I can dress the way I want: just with ketchup.  (Is Fuddrucker’s fast food?  A judgment call on that one.)  However, for breakfast, McDonald’s has the best pancakes, aside from IHOP.  Where are the Hippie Meals with McAcid (“do you believe in acid?”).  Everyone already knows about McDonald’s, anyhow, and I kissed their McAss in the FFN & Reefer Madness blog.

By the way, what is Grimace??

 Burger King.  Since Burger King’s main deal is the Whopper, another of these burgers with too much shit inside, BK is not a big one for me.  At least their breakfast menu has Mini Cinis.  The fries here are good, though not as good as Roy’s.  Where are the Burger King glasses?  All the movie tie-ins these days are for kids meal toys.  (Why no “Reservoir Dogs”, “Eyes Wide Shut”, or “Scarface” tie-in?  Come on!)

 Wendy’s.  Lame – they make a “big” burger by stacking up the smaller, thinner ones.  Uhh, yeahh.  Once was enough for their crappy excuse for a hamburger.  But the chicken nuggets and fries are worth indulging in. RIP Dave Thomas…no, not the Doug McKenzie guy from SCTV.

 Five Guys.  Not a bad burger.  This started out as a local – Arlington, Virginia – chain with just a few locations, then expanded dramatically in very recent years.  Now there’s one in Frederick to tempt my mom, though with a Roy’s right next door, the temptation can’t be that strong.

 KFC.  Quality chicken, though I can’t stand dark meat or “buffalo wings”.  The crispy skins on the chicken are a guilty pleasure.  Even the crispy strips are great.  I’m not big into chicken, but I’ll go with KFC every now and then.  Back in the 70s’, several KFCs were Gino’s (1959-82), with an indistinguishable menu.

 Long John Silver’s.  Along with Arthur Treacher’s Fish & Chips, the only seafood-oriented fast food place I know of, and both are equally thin on the ground in my neck of the woods.  There is a LJS in Falls Church, but I’m not aware of where the nearest ATF&C is.  Both were pretty much the same, not bad, but seafood is not my cup of tea.

 Dunkin’ Donuts vs. Krispy Kreme vs. Montgomery Donuts.  I’m not a cop or a donut guy (Homer Simpson: “donut….”) so this really isn’t my scene, but once I discovered KK it was all over.  While the KK donuts freshly baked at the store, right off the flat rack, are heavenly – well worthy of Homer’s drooling adoration – the ones that make it to the supermarkets aren’t worth considering.  For some reason Montgomery Donuts had a store policy of always having a cheap shitty radio cranking out the local news channel. 

 Baskin-Robbins vs. Carvel vs. Cold Stone.  I’m not much of an ice cream guy; to me Dairy Queen is in a league of their own.  Among the lesser lights, BR is probably the best.  Carvel had the ice cream cakes, but to me cake should be cake, right?  If I want ice cream I’ll eat ice cream.  They did have the chocolate-sprinkled Lollapalooza, though I don’t know if they still have it.  The one in Gaithersburg was right next to the record store where my brother got Hotter Than Hell (KISS) and I got a Sha Na Na record (which of those two bands filled the stadiums, huh?).  Cold Stone is not to be confused with the idiotically named Stone Hot Pizza.  You know, like Queen’s “Stone Hot Crazy” and the wrestler “Stone Hot” Steve Austin.

 Bob’s.  Only in Brazil – the first one opened in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro in 1952.  The guy who started Bob’s in the 50s used to work for McDonald’s, so it’s no surprise that this Brazilian chain is virtually indistinguishable from McDonald’s.  Not bad at all, if you like the burgers, fries, and drink deal, but nothing special beyond that.  They don’t have any evil clown or bizarre, H.R. Pufn’Stuff like psychedelic characters to entertain the kids and freak out the adults.  It’s just remarkable that Brazilians can pull off such a good copy of McDonald’s.

 Habib’s.  Another only in Brazil, Portugal and Angola (when I think of fast food, I definitely think of Angola).  This is Lebanese fast food – go figure!  Not only that, they serve beer and caipirinhas!  Mixed drinks at a fast food place?  Amazing.  Even more remarkable, the guy who founded it in São Paulo is Portuguese, not Arab!  Top menu items are esfiha (not bad with meat filling) and kibe, sort of an egg-shaped grenade of ground beef laced with onions (blah).  They were going to expand to the US in 2001, until that minor incident on September 11 made Arab things somewhat unpopular here.  They might as well have called it McJihad’s for all the good it would have done.   If the war in Iraq ever ends (?) maybe they can get Habib’s going here.  There is no Habib’s in Lebanon, but there is Taco Bell in Mexico.  Go figure.

 Burger Chef.  Gone, but not forgotten (1956-1982).  BC used to have these fantastic pop-up meals, a different one each week, consistently week after week.  You never knew what you’d get, it was like the Grateful Dead of fast food.  Although the food was garden variety fast food (burgers, fries, shakes) the packaging was unique.

 Red Barn.  Another casualty of the Fast Food Wars, starting in the early 60s and ending in the 80s.  I can’t recall the food being particularly special, but the barn motif was unique.  I still see former Red Barns under new mgmt as banks, dry cleaners, etc. in the same barn-like building.  Somewhere there’s a barn out in the country shaped like a McDonald’s, probably the scariest place you could be if you were a McCow or a McChicken.

 Jack-in-the-Box.  Unlike Burger Chef, which is defunct nationwide, JitB only lost the Reston, Virginia location but is still thriving elsewhere in the country.  We went to the Reston one back in the 70s, but the only special element in their menu were the tacos, long before we even knew Taco Bell existed.

 A&W.  I’m not a big fan of root beer, but this place has decent food.  Not so decent, though, that I feel compelled to visit the only one I know of still in existence in my area, in Chantilly near the intersection of 28 and 50.

 Dairy Queen.  They had one at Walnut Hill, in Gaithersburg (near the Kramer’s where we got the Star Trek shirts mentioned in the last blog), which closed ages ago; now they seem to be coming back.  Although it has a non-ice-cream menu – including burgers – I only go there for the delicious hot fudge sundaes.  They used to have Dennis the Menace as a mascot.

 Mario’s.  A local sub place in Arlington, only ONE location since the 50’s and now open practically 24 hours a day.  They make the lousy square-sliced pizzas (not that great) but they have the best steak & cheese subs anywhere, bar none.  The meat is super thick, no one else does it that well.  On Wilson Blvd. east of Ballston and west of Clarendon, two blocks from the George Mason University School of Law – I had lots of subs on lunch breaks during law school.

 Jerry’s Subs & Pizzas.  Excellent subs, a good 2^nd to Mario’s, and the pizza is damn good considering how cheap it is.  They have a great chopped steak sub, and several chicken subs.  The Beast is too big for me to finish even half of.  Their radio ads are pretty good.

 Subway.  I had a “Falling Down” moment when I tried their new steak sub, which looked NOTHING like the ad – totally lame.  They may have nice, freshly baked bread, but little of value to actually put on that nice, freshly baked bread.  No grill!  It’s all healthy, perhaps, but that doesn’t mean it tastes that great.  I can endure their meatball subs or grilled chicken breasts, but the steak subs are low quality.

 Quizno’s.  BLAH. Toasted subs, rat meat.  I can’t stand this place.

 Vocelli’s.  They took over from Domino’s as my favorite pizza delivery chain.  What can I say?  My particular taste in pizza.  I first had it out in Centreville at my brother’s house, and they gradually expanded into my neighborhood, thank God.

 Domino’s.  A close second to Vocelli’s.  The breadsticks are also quality.

 Pizza Hut.  VOMITO.  I can’t stand their cheese.  What diseased cow do they come from?  The breadsticks are quality, though.  For some reason the lunch buffet pizza is not bad – but why it should be any different than the usual pizza, I have no clue.  Usually the all-you-can-eat stuff is noxious trash compared to the a la carte menu, here it’s the other way around (this is why I avoid Old Country Buffet and the other all-you-can-puke buffet places).  I will say this: they are the most innovative at coming out with bizarre variants, like stuffed-crust pizza, though it would mean more if the cheese wasn’t so disgusting.  Maybe their R&D Dept. is a bunch of stoners high on weed – truly inspired!!!  Picture a house full of stoners, cluelessly toking and eating pizza, listening to the Dead, Floyd, Allman Brothers, while behind a two-way mirror, unknown to them, Pizza Hut scientists in white lab coats holding clipboards diligently monitor the unwitting subjects, waiting for them to come up with yet another “totally radical” pizza innovation – and laughing when the stoners recognize, in Pizza Hut commercials, that “dude, they totally ripped off my idea!!!” and then get paranoid (rightfully so) before, like, crashing.

 Papa John’s.  #3 after Domino’s and Vocelli’s.  Not bad, just not as good as the others.  Their breadsticks, though, are a bit weak.

 Incidentally, I just got back from New Jersey (just outside NYC) and had some fantastic New York style pizza.  For some reason it’s practically impossible to find it outside the NYC/NJ area, though there are countless places around here which claim – incorrectly so – to have so-called “New York style” pizza.  It’s good pizza – though not necessarily the best.  The worst pizza is a tie between University of Maryland Dining Services and any of that cake/pie/crap they call “Chicago style pizza”.

 Little Caesar’s.  Now few and far between – most of the ones in my area are now Papa John’s - but an excellent deal when they were around.  Their carry-out special was unbeatable, so we’d gladly go there to pick it up.  My first night I had my base Firebird, November 22, 1992, we went out and got Little Caesar’s TWICE.  Good memories.

Fast Food Nation and Reefer Madness

My computer at my old office crashed, along with the next few planned blog entries, so I have to adlib here and come up with something quickly. As it happens, I finished off Reefer Madness, a book by Eric Schlosser, best known for Fast Food Nation. I may as well review both of them.

I went into FFN expecting it to be an all-out crucifixion of McDonald’s and the fast food industry: nasty, obnoxious artery-clogging filth; and evil, soulless corporations enslaving millions of hapless workers in hopeless, dead-end McJobs. I was wrong.

First off, nowhere in FFN does Schlosser condemn fast food as unhealthy. Sure, he doesn’t claim that it’s healthy or good for you, but simply the absence of positive nutritional value is not, in itself, an indictment of this class of food as poison. He falls well short of that. In fact, he goes into considerable detail about the conscientious efforts of the various chains – particularly Jack-in-the-Box – to guarantee that its food is safe and free from bacteria and other impurities which could cause food poisoning or disease. Any discussion of the long-term effects of a lifetime of McDonald’s consumption is outside the scope of his book.

He was particularly impressed with the skill of the industry at developing artificial colors and flavors, centered in their chemical plants located along the New Jersey Turnpike (which any of us familiar with that strip of highway has surely seen at some point). Note: artificial almond flavor is actually LESS dangerous than natural almond flavor, which contains trace elements of cyanide. Yep. Though the amount of cyanide in an almond is so small, you’d have to eat literally thousands, or even millions, to have a chance of dying. Death by almonds? Not likely.

He was also impressed with the scope, organization, planning and efficiency of McDonald’s. As I recall from my days as a business student in college, practically every management professor and textbook was impressed by the thoroughness with which McDonald’s structures its operations. The machines in each restaurant are specifically designed to work in a certain fashion with zero discretion left to the 16 year old no-experience, bad attitude slackers who make up the workforce.

Granted, that makes the job itself as soulless and dull as any on an assembly line in a factory – after all, the goal is to mass-produce fries, burgers, etc. and quickly serve them to hungry, impatient customers – but it means we, as customers, can count on the same food, in the same quality, and the same quick service (if not sincerely pleasant!) whether it’s a McDonald’s in New York, L.A., Paris, London, Moscow, or Tokyo, allowing for regional variations in menu and taste, which is by design, not any failure of the local operation to meet corporate standards.

Naturally the personnel practices of McDonald’s and other chains are never going to impress Michael Moore, but Schlosser falls far short of condemning the industry as feudal. That is reserved for the next book….

Despite its title, Reefer Madness is not just about marijuana, though 1/3 of the book is devoted to that subject. The theme of the book is America’s underground economy: marijuana, illegal immigrants, and pornography. Here is where Schlosser takes closer aim at questionable employment practices, particularly among illegal immigrants in California’s strawberry farms (and to a lesser extent Florida’s fruit industry). Not only does he roast the growers in California who mercilessly exploit the Mexicans, he explicitly questions the Invisible Hand of capitalism and invokes Adam Smith to specifically invoke the dreaded words “market failure”.
Unfortunately, he does little to suggest what the solution to that market failure is, beyond a passing idea of paying the workers a penny more per unit. But consider this: first of all, we already have minimum wage laws; second, these are illegal immigrants, who shouldn't even be in the country in the first place, much less working. What exactly is the argument that people who entered the country illegally and are violating the laws by working (albeit with the obvious cooperation of their employers) should receive the benefit of our labor laws? This issue was completely ignored.

On the other hand, these people do provide a valuable service, and they do something which no one else in the country is willing to do -"it's a dirty job but someone's gotta do it". In fact, the growers may have a difficult time hiring Americans to pick strawberries even if they were willing to pay a decent wage and America's strawberry consumers were willing to pay a higher price. The guest worker solution - proposed by others and criticized by Schlosser - seems to be the most appropriate recognition both of the need for these workers in our economy and their illegal status.

Given how heavily he slams not only the industry but capitalism as an economic form, this is all the more reason why he should have spent an equal amount of time providing a solution – one which would not have caused more problems than it solved. I didn't hear much of that from him besides his cursory rejection of the guest worker proposal. All very well to sneer at “the invisible hand” and write off the Libertarians as naïve children who fail to recognize the true complexity of modern society and economics, but if you can’t propose a realistic solution, or a better alternative to other proposals, you should just shut up. Two words: RENT CONTROL.
The other two thirds of Reefer Madness concern marijuana, with a strong emphasis on how stupid many of these mandatory minimums are, and the hypocrisy of politicians who demand the death penalty for drug dealers – except when their own children are caught selling pot by the pound under their very noses. He’ll get no argument from me: amen, brother, he’s preaching to the choir…. Obviously marijuana is far less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco, yet gets hammered as if it’s cyanide. Come on. Both the idiocy of the harsh drug laws and the rapant tyranny of the asset forfeiture laws (discussed briefly therein) could fill entire books.

The third part is porn. The majority of this section is a lengthy biography of Rueben Sturman, the man who singlehandedly created the US porn industry; covering Sturman basicially describes how the porn industry itself got started here. Here’s where Schlosser is more simply informative and isn’t up on his Marxist-Socialist soapbox. It's hard to tell whether Schlosser considers him a victim or a hero; on one hand he developed an important industry, on the other he evaded taxes until an IRS agent finally brought him down. Perhaps he's neither - or both.

Entertaining, on both counts. Unfortunately the porn section didn’t provide any samples…