'DEFEND YOUR CHICKEN'... FROM WHOM?

I almost never watch TV, but the Olympics were on last month, and I couldn't help but see a couple of new "Defend Your Chicken" commercials from McDonald's. I forgot to blog about it at the time, but was reminded when a "These Are Mine, so Keep on Drivin'" billboard went up near my workplace.

As blogger Sam notes, the idea seems to be to make the latest retread chicken-style-meat-product sound appealing by assuring you that you're at risk of thievery from everybody else. To someone who doesn't spend enough time (I guess) steeped in consumerist mass communications, this seems like the height of cynical desperation: An appeal to the most basic us-vs-them attitudes fostered by rampant capitalism. But then I realized the paranoia represented in these ads also strikes a chord with meat eaters who are nervous that their delicious chicken "tenders" will someday be taken away by a shift in cultural mores. Poor folks. What you don't realize is, the worst part of the whole thing is, when the time comes, you're gonna voluntarily take the chicken away from yourself. The horror!