While Donald Rumsfeld takes his victory lap in Iraq and Americans celebrate the capture of yet another al Qaeda creep, the British media are consumed by a controversy over … chocolate. It’s worth paying attention–because a similar story will in all likelihood be coming on this side of the Atlantic very soon.
Cadbury’s is the dominant British chocolate maker. Last week, they announced a new promotional scheme. In exchange for empty Cadbury wrappers, the company would offer schools athletic equipment. It’s not exactly a new idea, but it kicked off an incredible row in the British press. Cadbury was accused of encouraging obesity: Broadcasters kept repeating the statistic, which may even be true, that a child would have to play basketball for 90 hours to burn off the number of calories contained in the wrappers that would have to be collected in exchange for the ball.
In vain did Cadbury protest that the British already eat a lot of chocolate: The kids could simply collect the wrappers that they, their families, their friends, and the neighbors were generating anyway. In the reports I saw, Cadbury was not even allowed to speak for itself–after two minutes of repeating accusations, interviewing shocked and appalled teachers and headmasters, and tut-tutting over a giant pile of empty wrappers, the reporter gave Cadbury’s side himself, in a single grudging sentence at the end of the item.
The British left wishes to ban foxhunting–but when it sets the media hounds on a corporate victim, not even the ears and tail are left unmangled.
The Cadbury story originates in two impulses, one peculiarly British, the other ominously likely to cross the Atlantic.
Although Tony Blair’s Labour government has lavished huge spending increases on the country’s public schools, the extra money has (surprise, surprise) failed to keep pace with the schools’ spending increases–especially (again surprise, surprise) increases in pay and benefits. The teacher unions hope to use the crisis they themselves created in order to squeeze more money from the Blair government. They are making their grab now on the assumption that after Iraq, Blair will be reluctant to quarrel again with the left wing of his party – which of course supports the unions’ demands. In order to attract public attention and support, the teachers are claiming that the schools are “in crisis”–and the best way to dramatize the crisis is (as ever) to threaten to shut down popular activities like gym. Cadbury’s offer to provide schools with gym equipment is thus a threat and a menace to the unions’ blackmail strategy.
But something deeper is going on as well. During the battles over tobacco, skeptical conservatives used to wonder–what’s next? Attacks on cheese and chocolate and cola makers for causing obesity? (There’s a funny scene in Chris Buckley’s Thank You for Smoking in which a tobacco lobbyist indignantly insists that a single cheddar cheese cube is much more dangerous than a single cigarette.)
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Well guess what? That is exactly what is coming next. The first lawsuit against McDonald’s has already in the United States–and now we are witnessing the beginnings of a public-relations campaign against a chocolate maker–and Coke and Pepsi will soon be in the gunsights. The campaign against junk food unites all the Left’s deepest prejudices: its abomination of personal responsibility; its conviction that free markets poison and sicken people; its ravenous appetite for other people’s money; and finally its limitless snobbery.
Why do I say so snobbery? Well consider this: Chocolate bars and hamburgers and soda are not the only foods that can cause obesity when eaten to excess. A glass of red wine contains as many calories as the equivalent amount of Coke. A quarter-pounder with bacon and cheese is no worse for you than a half-pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. And ounce for ounce, Cadbury’s chocolate contains fewer calories than Godiva’s. Yet as they activists plot campaigns against Big Junk to follow their campaign against Big Tobacco, don’t expect to hear anything said against Big Napa, Big Hippies, and Big Belgium.
Or am I putting ideas in their heads?