Archive for October 4th, 2009
Sunday Open Thread: October 4th, 2009
How do you like waking up on a Sunday morning to this:
Do Dr. and Mrs. Utopia have not a single bit of sense between the two of them?
“Celebrating date night” is not appropriate when they just “made such a sacrifice” by jetting off to Europe to wine and dine at the Danish palace, taking Oprah in tow (or the cargo hold, more likely).
“Celebrating date night” is a little hard for us to take when troops are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan because this president is just too busy campaigning to fully assume his duties as Commander in Chief.
“Celebrating date night” is highly inappropriate when we have a first lady who thinks $600 “can’t even buy me a nice pair of earrings”, who’s only proud of her country for the first time in her adult diapers life, who has proclaimed herself “the world’s greatest fashion icon” while wearing the losing creations from a Project Runway Lazy Boy furniture store fabric challenge.
This White House feels very Versailles these days. While wars rage overseas and people suffer at home, Dr. and Mrs. Utopia glide so effortlessly in a carbonated world, insulated in magical little bubbles, wafted along in the hot air of media fawning.
Whenever we hear about the latest “Obama date night” we think about how well pet food sales are doing in this economy, and know it’s not because people have suddenly gotten a bunch of new pets. It’s because people are so broke many have taken to eating dog food out of the can.
But, the current first lady has no problem with that, we’re sure. Save all the cake for Oprah, let the people eat dog food, because Mrs. Utopia has places to go and people to see.
Her limousine IS waiting, after all.
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What’s on your mind this Sunday?
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UPDATE: We ran across this article on McDonald’s opening in the Louvre Museum in France.
Personally, we think it’s crass to have any chain restaurants at all in something like the Louvre. But we aren’t anti-McDonald’s. One of us here worked for McDonald’s as a freelance event planner a few years ago and we have to say it is a GREAT company. The corporate office is in a suburb of Chicago, and the staff there are wonderful to deal with. There really is a culture at the corporate level that wants to do the right thing and provide quality food products to families. They also tip really well: in addition to the freelancing fees (and they paid promptly, unlike other clients and the City) they gave one of us a coupon book with a year’s supply of salads and chicken sandwiches. That was literally lunch for a full year, on them. It was great. And a total surprise from them…the company that Morgan Spurlack and others would have you believe is such a villain.
If McDonad’s was smart, they’d create a stealth brand of restaurants that would run with the same efficiency but not carry the golden arches. Something along the lines of what Marriott does. Most of you probably don’t realize that Marriott owns Ritz-Carlton. When you stay at a Ritz-Carlton, you don’t realize that Marriott is calling the shots, and you think you are in an independent luxury brand. You’re not. Marriott controls the purchasing, the human resources, the vendor contracts, you name it. But, Marriott is smart and knows not everyone wants to stay at a Marriott…and there are others on the opposite end of the spectrum who can’t afford that mid-level brand, and instead stay at a Courtyard, which is also owned by Marriott, or a Town Place Suites, another Marriott brand, or the FABULOUS Residence Inns (honestly, if you aren’t staying in one of these whenever you travel you’re just stupid….they are just AWESOME..an in-room fridge, free dinners and breakfasts, barbeques, grocery shopping, they’re just wonderful).
McDonald’s could very easily create something like “La Nod’s”, for lack of a better word, and use their same supply chains and vendor agreements to provide the support to a high-volume, upscale concept that would be more appropriate in places like the Louvre, or close to other historic sites that McDonald’s wants to cash-in on because of all the foot traffic, but might avoid public outcry and resentment by not using those arches.
Starbucks is apparently trying this, too, by opening coffee shops in various cities that are not called Starbucks, but instead have local sounding names and are just run with Starbucks products and staff.
Brentano’s bookstores is another example of this…and so is Waldenbooks…both were run by Borders Group, but you wouldn’t know it, particularly at Brentano’s which marketed itself as an upscale bookstore…but Brentano’s was just a division of Borders…with the same supply chain and corporate structure, just a nicer shop to have in a nicer mall that didn’t want a Waldenbooks.
The other thing that’s interesting about this McDonalds-meets-Louvre story is how anti-American the French are acting in the age when everyone is supposed to love America because Dr. Utopia is president and Mrs. Utopia gets such rave reviews for her “fashions”. If the whole point in electing Dr. Utopia was so that the world would love America, and McDonald’s is an American company, then shouldn’t the French be falling overthemselves to open McDonald’s at the Louvre, inside Notred Dame (with French fry dispenses right inside the gargoyle’s mouths), at the top of the Arc D’Triumphe, and balancing aloft the spire of the Eifel Tower (in a feet of engineering wonder, like the stacked elegance of a properly assembled Big Mac)?
Where is all that instant international love for all things American that was promised if Dr. Utopia was elected promises?
And where the Hell are our damn unicorns?
