Bold Faced Lies
by HT on Feb.18, 2009, under Food & Holiday, News & Politics
I just finished watching an episode of the fairly new Fox show “Lie to Me” where there are several experts who can tell by so-called micro-expressions whether or not a person is lying and while I’m not here to recommend the show it has got me thinking a bit more about lying. Lately lying has been a theme that just seems to crop up more and more. There’s lots of talk about A-Rod and if he’s telling the whole truth about steroids and there’s been tons of talk about Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich and his bold faced lies about selling a senate seat. Normally I’d talk about how President Obama went on national TV and lied straight to the American people about the stimulus bill, claiming that it absolutely had no pork and that it was a targeted bill at timely solutions. Today, however, I think I’d like to mention the sneaky lie…by McDonald’s.
I don’t know how many of you watch TV on the air with commercials and whether or not you pay attention to a single one of those commercials. I for one hadn’t watched “live” TV for years until I recently bought one and have since seen far more commercials than I’d like to admit. One of the one’s that was spammed at me for a while was McDonald’s and their quarter pounder deal taking place on Feburary 17th. I wish I could find the ad for you but frankly I’m too tired to do more than a basic google/youtube search so I’ll have to summarize. Basically the ad hails the wonders of the quarter pounder and ends by saying: “On February 17th buy one quarter pounder with cheese and get one free for a quarter.”
Prior to yesterday that ad meant only one thing to me, that on Febuary 17th McDonalds was going to lose money on quarter pounders to make money on other things because they were selling you two quarter pounders for just 25 cents. As it turns out McDonalds expects that you believe that the slogan means that if you buy one quarter pounder with cheese for full price you will get the second one for only a quarter. Now maybe I was being neive when I thought they’d basically be giving these away free, but hey Denny’s gave away free Grand Slams a few weeks ago so why not.
The thing that gets me about this, is that they purposely worded the ad so that you would think you get two burgers for 25 cents and they knew that if you didn’t read the fine print and went into the store thinking that, you would probably still buy one because it’s actually still a pretty good deal. I can’t quite say it’s false advertising, because honestly I didn’t read the fine print but what in the world does McDonald’s think free means anyway? Obviously to them free means 25 cents and that strikes me as somewhat odd. Personally I hope people walked out of stores disgusted at the gimmick and didn’t give them any more money. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind McDonald’s doing lots of business, but if they’re going to lie to me they’re not getting mine.
February 19th, 2009 on 9:13 am
Darn those liars…. >.< I see it all the time though, not just McDonald’s.
ZePuKa’s last blog post.. 5 Songs for Singles Awareness Day
February 19th, 2009 on 1:03 pm
not to mention the food is disgusting . . .
I’m reminded of the Star Trek episode ‘Is There in Truth No Beauty?’ which involves an alien ambassador at the sight of whom one goes mad. I was mostly reminded of the title since the episode itself doesn’t have much relevance to the topic at hand.
It seems that marketers don’t think that the public wants to know the truth. Everything is sugar coated and is as misleading as possible. Most notably are the adverts for Cash For Gold. ‘SEND US YOUR JEWELRY AND GET RICH!’ in reality you’re better off selling your stuff on ebay for far more than that company will offer. Also those so-called diet pills that are nothing more than non-FDA approved vitamins . . .
If people knew the truth about things being advertised, nobody would buy.
‘I wrote a get rich quick book! Here are my secrets: 1. Write a get rich quick book! 2. Sell it on TV!’
‘Stop living in a horrible black and white world! Get this new mop!’
‘Buy our phone service for $24.95! But in order to actually use it you’ll need to pay a lot of outrageous and bogus fees!’
Is there in truth no beauty? There is, but it is often not the sort of beauty one hopes for, certainly not as advertised.
backstept’s last blog post.. Fox Hunting
February 21st, 2009 on 3:37 am
You realize that pork gets added to bills in committee, right? It’s plausible that there was no pork in the stimulus package when Prez-O told us about it.
Also, welcome to Capitalism. If they told us the truth, this “recession” would look like a vacation.
February 21st, 2009 on 5:46 pm
@JB – Yes I’m well aware of the fact that pork gets added to bills in committee. In this case, however, the bill was already written and the vote was about to take place when “Prez-O” came on national TV and lied to us about it.
HT’s last blog post.. Bold Faced Lies