Politically correct lawsuits - the latest chapter

It seems a California woman is seeking class-action status for her lawsuit against McDonalds for promoting the company's Happy Meals to children. I like the New York Daily News' take on the matter.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group, claims [McDonalds] violates California law for the hamburger chain to make its meals too appealing to kids, thus launching them on a lifelong course to overeating and other health horrors. It’s representing an allegedly typical mother of two from Sacramento named Monet Parham. What’s Parham’s (so to speak) beef? “Because of McDonald’s marketing, [her daughter] Maya has frequently pestered Parham into purchasing Happy Meals, thereby spending money on a product she would not otherwise have purchased.”

You’re probably wondering: How is this grounds for a lawsuit? No one forced Parham to take her daughters to McDonald’s, buy them that particular menu item, and sit by as they ate every last French fry in the bag (if they did).

No, she’s suing because when she said no, her kids became disagreeable and “pouted” – for which she wants class action status. If she gets it, McDonald’s isn’t the only company that should worry. Other kids pout because parents won’t get them 800-piece Lego sets, Madame Alexander dolls and Disney World vacations. Are those companies going to be liable too?

. . .

Much of the interviewing press was happy to treat Monet Parham as a random (if oddly well-informed) California mom, but it didn’t take the blogosphere long to discover that she is apparently anything but random. Ira Stoll, who blogs at Future of Capitalism and used to put out the New York Times-tweaking smartertimes.com, soon discovered (via a commenter) that she is in fact the same person as Monet Parham-Lee, who is a “regional program manager” on the state of California payroll for child nutrition matters.

Specifically, she works on a federally funded program that campaigns to exhort people to eat their vegetables and that sort of thing. The comment:

“Interestingly, her name has been scrubbed from the website of Champions for Change, the Network for a Healthy California. She has given numerous presentations and attended conferences on the importance of eating vegetables and whatnot.

“She presents herself as an ordinary mother. She is not. She is an advocate, and an employee of a California agency tasked with advocating the eating of vegetables. To the extent that Monet Parham-Lee has EVER taken her daughter to a McDonald's, she should have known better.”

There's more at the link.

Popehat also skewers the woman behind the lawsuit:

Monet Parham-Lee Is A Bad Parent. Monet Parham-Lee Is A Weakling. Monet Parham-Lee Blames McDonalds For Her Weakness, And Her Poor Parenting Skills. Monet Parham-Lee Is A Liar, Or At Least Deceptive. And Monet Parham-Lee Is A Bad Person.

. . .

Monet Parham-Lee is suing because, we’re led to believe, her six year old daughter Maya harasses her on a daily basis for plastic Shreks. Monet Parham-Lee, evidently, is suing for negligent or intentional infliction of emotional distress. Her emotional distress is caused by the fact that her six year old daughter, Maya, will not stop hectoring her about these plastic Shreks.

I have a suggestion for Monet Parham-Lee. I have several suggestions in fact:

1. Tell your six year old daughter Maya to shut the f*** up. And eat her damned vegetables.

2. Buy the damned Happy Meal on the way home from work, then throw out the hamburger and fries. Give Maya the plastic Shrek. A Happy Meal costs two dollars or something. You don’t have two dollars? You’re an overpaid state employee in a state that’s going bankrupt because of people like you. You can afford it.

Again, more at the link.

Finally, Ira Stoll (cited above) has been keeping a careful eye on developments. He recently reported that one of the grounds for the lawsuit was the following:

McDonald's Web site lists 24 Happy Meal combinations. Considering that a reasonable lunch for a young child would contain no more than 430 calories (one third of the 1,300 calories that is the recommended daily intake for children 4 to 8 years old), not a single Happy Meal meets that target. The average of all 24 meals is 26 percent higher in calories than a reasonable lunch. In fact, one meal (cheeseburger, French fries, and chocolate milk) hits 700 calories — a whopping 63 percent higher (and more than half the calories for the entire day).

Unfortunately for the plaintiffs, one of Mr. Stoll's readers did a little investigating of his own. He cites "the San Francisco public schools elementary school lunch menu for November". It apparently shows that "Weekly average per-meal calories for the government school meals, not including drinks, are, according to the menu, 708, 662, 666, 730, and 650". Furthermore, the ingredient list for one of those meals, a so-called 'pizzaburger', reads like a chemist's nightmare! That being the case, would someone care to point out how McDonald's Happy Meals could possibly be any worse for a child than the Government-approved and -supplied alternative?

I hope and trust that the California courts will toss this travesty of justice as far as they can throw it . . . but hey, it's Moonbat Central out there. Logic and rational thought are not necessarily priorities.

*Sigh*

Peter