Big Mac Grinches, Christmas Paranoia and the Thought Police

We’ve been encouraging people to eat like pigs on Saturday by going to McDonald’s for a Big Mac. In case you missed it, a dollar of every Big Mac sold goes to Ronald McDonald Children’s Charities. It’s a worthy cause, though not everyone agrees.

Pete from Melbourne writes, “Stop promoting McDonalds already...Charity = tax write-off + marketing tool. If they really wanted to give, they'd say ‘all profit from Big Macs for that day’. Bah.”

Humbug.

And speaking of Grinches, we read online that a recruitment firm in Sydney has encouraged local Santas to use the phrase “Ha Ha Ha!” this Christmas season. The more traditional term “Ho Ho Ho!” may scare children and be derogatory to women.

That doesn’t exactly seem fair to paranoid people, does it? They will walk by and wonder why Santa is laughing at them. “Does he know something about me? Does he know where I’ve been sleeping, and what I’ve been doing while I’m awake?”

How absurd. Somebody call the thought police. Or, remind the folks at the recruitment firm that life is a full contact sport. You are bound to be offended by what people say or think. That’s the beauty of living in a free society.

For example on the tram travelling down St. Kilda road last night, we happened to sit across from a bunch of teenagers. They were dancing and shouting profanities in the usual teenage defiance of good manners and convention. No one arrested them, although several people did eventually tell them to shut up.

A place that protects people from words that “might” be hurtful by forcing you to alter how you speak isn’t free. It’s just paranoid, over-reaching, and vaguely threatening. But hey, it’s a free country. People are still free to say idiotic things. We are all for that.

Dan Denning
The Daily Reckoning Australia

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