Hummer and McDonald’s: two of the most hated names in capitalism. How appropriate that they should team up together.

My wife and I had lunch today with our three-year old son in the friendly, comfortable environs of a local McDonald’s restaurant, a welcome interlude in the middle of my workday. As we sat there under a plaque on the wall featuring the legendary Ray Kroc who was largely responsible for the phenomenal success of the McDonald’s franchise, I noticed the familiar shape of a Hummer H2 Sports Utility Truck in my son’s hand. When I realised that this was the accompanying toy for the new Happy Meal promotion, I almost choked on my Chicken Snack Wrap in gleeful mirth.

I can just hear the leftist minds now….

Not only are consumers helping to build evil corporate profits by sitting in these dens of iniquity, chomping on animal meat mass-produced by money-driven gluttons, greed-whores and avaricious trash-pimps, but they’re teaching their kids how to destroy the environment in the process! Giving kids Hummers in Happy Meals? What next, giving them guns? It should be illegal!

Oh, folks, this couldn’t be better. McDonald’s was off-limits to left-liberals before: now it’s a virtual quarantine, reserved for those with diseased ideologies such as libertarianism and conservatism. Thankfully McDonald’s has been regaining some market share recently, and the absence of leftist zealots doesn’t appear to have hurt it. Yes, the Happy Meal box now contains a Hummer, in a promotion McDonald’s calls ‘Hummer of a Summer’, or, for the girls, a Polly Pocket. The only thing that would make this better is if the girls’ toy was a Barbie doll: then it would be PERFECT. (Of course, even having a separate toy for boys and girls could anger the Left.)

Reporting in the New York Times, Melanie Warner writes, “Television and radio ads, which started running this week, feature a family riding in a Hummer on the way to McDonald’s. With enough visits to McDonald’s, kids will be able to collect eight different Hummers in a variety of colors, including two versions of the H1, the original and most monstrous member of the Hummer family…” – ah, dear readers, I’m just enjoying this too damned much.

I anticipated the agitated reaction from some of the more offbeat, peripheral leftist types. But it seems that people are suddenly not in the slightest hesitant of throwing in reactionary, unreasoned ambiguities about the promotion. Take this one from Brendan Bell, an energy analyst with the Sierra Club: “Hummers in Happy Meals are about as responsible as dipping a Big Mac in the fry oil and serving it to your kids.” Sizzlin’. He then went on to give some non-facts about Hummer technology and why it’s inefficient, which was promptly rebutted by a GM spokesman who informed him that Hummer engines are based on some fairly new technology. Despite the low miles per gallon rating that is to be expected with a capable off-road vehicle like the Hummer, it shouldn’t be described as ‘inefficient’: every drop of gasoline is turned into boulder-climbing, load-pulling horsepower. It is only ‘inefficient’ for people who don’t like the idea of allowing other people the freedom to pursue the recreational activities that utilise the Hummer’s design.

Of course, the Hummer is not alone in being a vehicle designed primarily with recreational, and nonessential, purposes in mind. Perhaps, then, the answer according to the Left should be to make use of the following vehicles illegal: Formula One cars, stock racing cars, Harley-Davidsons, dune buggies, quads, dirt bikes, tricycles, scramblers, motocross, Jeeps, Rangers, Argos, aerosans, snowmobiles, jetskis, personal watercraft, speedboats, pontoon boats, ski boats, wakeboard boats, jet boats, powered yachts, ocean cruisers, RVs, motorhomes, fifth-wheels, diesel pushers, totorhomes, SUVs and recreational aircraft.

No?

Then why hate Hummer? Probably for the same reason they hate McDonald’s: it doesn’t fit in their closed-minded, ideologically-nomadic, doctrinally unstable, culturally-stereotyping, politically paranoid worldview.

Well. Let’s see if we can’t collect all eight before the promotion ends, huh son? I could really do with a Big Mac.

John Wright