Recently, the McDonald’s corporation has taken to the airwaves to unveil their most recent efforts at rehabilitating their brand and their menu.   For a number of their customers the cost to purchase various menu items will not require our nation’s currency, but rather a phone call from the patron to their mother for the purpose of conveying their love for the person who has given them life.

How utterly charming and precious of company executives to convey to their consumers how the cost of products can occasionally be absorbed not by filthy lucre, but by the saccharin sentiments which these patrons articulate in enormously abbreviated and artificial conversations with their maternal parent.

There is a sublime and outrageous irony to this process, in that in order to escape material payment for their purchases these individuals are asked to express their affection and ardor one of their parents.  That these sentiments are without question genuine reflections of the respect and admiration with which so many of our citizens regard their mothers is not my ferocious objection but rather that the request is not undertaken as the result of a spontaneous and unprovoked outburst of maternal feeling, that these customers might manifest, but rather by the desire to economize on their food budgets, while the company basks in its attempts to communicate just how noble and spiritually enlightened they have become to the viewing public.

Sadly, for the architects of this advertisement a most ironic response has surfaced among both customers and their mothers. Some patrons have expressed their displeasure at this attempt to manipulate their emotions and reduce expressions of authentic gratitude and affection for all that their mothers have contributed to an individuals stature and reputation for the sake of escaping payment of the ordered items. While some of those mothers who received these calls while grateful of the sentiments their children have conveyed, have expressed astonishment that a company that wishes to ingratiate itself with a national community of American mothers on the one hand can in its treatment of its workers manifest precisely the opposite attitude i.e. callous indifference to the financial tribulations of many in its employ who find it impossible to exist on the paltry salary which a minimum wage reflects.

As one mother stated her perspective, that concern and regard for our fellows should extend beyond the members of our families and be observable in the treatment of all in our lives, and particularly as it relates to those whose labor is indispensable in the provision of our meals and without whose efforts those franchisees and corporate officials could not continue to receive extraordinarily munificent compensation packages and maintain their opulent lifestyles.

Ah well back to the drawing board as McDonald’s continues its inexorable deterioration both with regard to menu choices that many Americans find unappetizing and labor policies that are cruelly exploitive of its workforce.  Better to patronize establishments that provide health and appealing menu selections and provide wages to their employees which permit them to attain a middle class existence and support themselves and their families in a manner which is a compliment to their employees and this society.