4 July - 17 July 1996
Each week McSpotlight will be updated on how the world's press has covered McLibel, McDonald's and multinationals in general.
She was entitled to the Extra Value Meal, which offers six McNuggets; she took eight. Shades of Oliver Twist begging for another bowl of gruel. Shades of the ragged diner in the World War II-era song "One Meat Ball" being told, "You get no bread with one meat ball." We propose a new McD's anthem: "You deserve the sack today -- for two McNuggets."
Meanwhile, what Brit journalists call the "McLibel trial" has gone into its twenty-third month, making it the longest such proceeding in U.K. history. McDonald's sued five Greenpeace activists who were leafleting the company's restaurants. Three of them apologized rather than fight the company's legal talent, but two -- Helen Steel, a former gardener, and Dave Morris, a former postal worker, both on the dole -- elected to defend themselves. They have tied up Big Mac's army of attorneys at a cost of $10 million.
The amateur advocates have extracted embarrassing testimony revealing that McDonald's imported beef from Brazil while claiming its supply came from European Union countries, that it harasses and mistreats its employees, that it dumps styrofoam waste instead of recycling it. A McD's official testified that because Coke contains water it is "part of a balanced diet."
Take a couple of mouse potatoes and a truckload of anger, add the knack for setting up a Web site and what do you have?
Flame-broiled corporations.
Across the 'Net, new Web sites are cropping up every week dedicated to the sole purpose of "flaming" -- or electronically savaging -- corporations...
