soft drinks – Dave's Gone By

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Aired March 16, 2013 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/NUaspXp3-Kw

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of March 17th, 2013.

How big is too big? This is a question asked by real-estate agents, businesses and gay men since time immemorial. Now the same question is being put to soft drinks – at least in New York. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, or, as I like to call him, Big Brotherberg, wants to make it illegal for restaurants to sell sugary beverages in containers bigger than 16 ounces. Places like McDonald’s and 7/11 and even Starbucks, with their grande-vente-sabado-gigante-ultra-maxi-mocha-poppachinos – would be subject to fines unless they gave customers less goliath-sized portions.

To give Big Brotherberg his due, his motivations are truly admirable. Obesity is a huge problem in this country. Not just that fat people are unpleasant to look at, or sit next to on a bus, or listen to when they’re not being jolly; no, it’s that bad eating sends healthcare costs through the roof. Billions of dollars are funneled into treating heart disease and diabetes and tooth decay, and Ritalin for kids who are so hopped up on sugar, we confuse their natural exuberance for ADHD.

The rationale of a soft drink ban is that if you put less crap in front of people’s mouths, they will pour less garbage into their guts. Psychologically, this is absolutely sound. If we see six pieces of cheese on a plate, we’re probably gonna eat all six even if we stopped being after hungry after four. And have you been to a supermarket lately? Shopping carts are bigger than Buicks. Why? Because the cart looks empty and lonely with only half a dozen items in it. But with 15 items, we consummate our urge to consume.

So the logic is, if you give people 16 ounces of Dr. Pibb with their 8,000 calorie happy meal, they’ll get used to having a little less fructose with their fries. And right there, that’s 200 calories staying in the fountain and out of your colon. It’s a really great idea – if it were voluntary. If chain restaurants and family-style eateries said, “Hey, we’ll charge a little less, and we’ll serve a little less.” Maybe, eventually, people will go back to portion control the way it was before America supersized everything from street pretzels to porn stars’ boobs.

But wait a minute – Americans have already been downsized, and it hasn’t done a damn thing to shrink their waistlines. For years, snack companies have been slicing candy bars just a notch smaller for the same price, hoping we won’t notice. Potato chip makers have kept their bags the same while putting fewer spuds in it. They’re just being health conscious, right? And it’s really made such a difference to people’s buying and eating habits, right?

But more than that, if we’ve learned anything from the failure of prohibition or Nancy Reagan’s war on pot, it’s that banning vices does not work. It just drives the market underground and turns cravings into criminality. And I don’t care how well-meaning his motivations, New York’s mayor is overstepping his bounds. If a mother tells a ten year old, “I’m doing this for your own benefit,” well, sure; she’s a mom and he’s ten. If a government official tells you, “I’m doing this for your own good,” you know it’s only a matter of time before everyone visiting City Hall has to bring frankincense and a sacrificial goat.

I realize my opposition to the soda ban can be viewed as contradictory to my support of reasonable gun control. After all, how can I support 32 ounces in a big gulp if I’m against 32 bullets in a chamber? The answer is, which would you rather come across: a psychopath pointing a semi-automatic at a classroom, or a chubby guy with a Mountain Dew asking you the time because his wristwatch doesn’t fit anymore?

In striking down Mayor Brotherberg’s soda ban last week, Judge Milton Tingling – love that name! – Judge Tingling said the law was arbitrary and capricious and virtually unenforceable. It’s also insulting to grownups who wanna make their own choices. Even worse, it turns presumably smart people into retards. Restaurants are complaining, “Oh, no! We can only serve 16 ounces now, we have to get smaller cups.” News flash: 16 ounces fits even better in a 24-ounce cup than it does in a 16. You can actually walk past the counter without spilling Pepsi on your fingers.

Most aggravating is the unfairness. If you can go in a bodega and buy 20 cartons of cancer-causing cigarettes; if you can pop in a liquor store and buy beer by the keg; if you can visit your local topless bar and get twelve lap-dances (and by the way, I recommend Tina; she does this thing with her kegels), if you can saunter into a supermarket and buy a 2-liter 7-Up for one-fifty – if you can do all of this – why turn fast-food managers into cup cops?

Mayor Brotherberg, if you truly wanna cure obesity, stop this nanny nonsense and make real change. New York City is so crazy expensive, poor and middle-class families can’t afford fresh, organic produce. Try giving people real salaries and livable budgets, and they’ll eat in better restaurants. They’ll save Burger King for a once-in-awhile guilty pleasure instead of eating there three times a week because it’s the only thing a single mother has time, energy or money to manage.

As far as portion control, tell ya what Mayor. Next time you try to get some cash out of your bank account, I want the bank manager to tell you, “No, you don’t need $30,000 at one time. I’m cutting you off at 20; you can come back tomorrow for the rest. I realize it’s your money, but I don’t trust some of the business deals you might make, so . . . I’m doing this for your own good. Have a nice day.” That noise you’ll hear from Bloomberg’s throat will be a very big gulp, indeed.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Supersize Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.

—> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=28998

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #31 (12/4/2011): Coca Cola

Aired Dec. 3, 2011 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: Coca Cola

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of December 4th, 2011.

You know what the easiest job in the world is? No, not ranting on the radio, I don’t get paid for that. The easiest job in the world is selling Coca Cola. It’s been around for a hundred years, everybody drinks it, every grocery stocks it… You go into a shack in Malawi and say, “Barack Obama,” they look at you like you’re from another planet, but you say “Coca Cola” – oh, they start dancing around, they’re laughing, they want you to marry their cousin.

Selling Coca Cola is as easy as saying, “Hi, you wanna buy some Coca Cola?” Yes, you have Pepsi as a competitor, and those 99-cent, two-liter generic brands that SAY they’re cola, but we all know, it’s just Rustoleum with corn syrup. Financially, Coke might have a great year, or it might have an almost-great year, but really, it’s like asking the Sultan of Brunei at his roulette game, “Did you lose $3,000 or $30,000?” Either way, he’s not losing any sleep. Unless he drinks Coca Cola, in which case the caffeine will keep him up if the harem girls won’t.

So okay. Here is how you sell Coca Cola. You concoct it, you mix it, you put it in the bottle, you ship it from the factory, and you cash the checks. The beverage itself may have a secret formula, but everybody knows Coke’s formula for success – Step One: give people what they want and what they have always wanted. Step Two: Repeat step one.

Now, we all remember years ago when the marketing geniuses at Coke felt they had to justify their inflated salaries by doing something new. To be fair, it can’t be much fun promoting an item when you know deep down the marketing strategy you’ve used for the past ten years you could really use for the next fifty. And in the advertising and PR world, nobody gets a bonus for thinking inside the box. Unfortunately, in the real world, you know who thinks outside the box? Homeless people. They sleep in a box, then they go outside it to think. And you know what some of them are thinking? They’re thinking, “Shit, I used to be an executive at Coca Cola, until I invented New Coke.”

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? It’s one of the oldest sayings in the world, and if you think you know better, if you think you’re gonna prove the world wrong, get ready if you fail to fall on your tush into a cardboard box. Twenty-six years ago New Coke hit the market like a bottle of cancer, and it’s been an industry laughing stock – and object lesson – ever since.

So you’d figure the Coke folks would learn from their mistake. Red label, white letters, brown fizz, rule the world. But no, in the news this week was a story about Coca Cola using a special design for the holidays. Instead of a red background, they went with a white background and red letters, plus those cute little polar bears. All well and good, except the public took one look and said, “Wait a minute… is this regular Coke or Diet Coke?” Somehow the scientific gurus in the Coca Cola utility research kitchen missed the fact that white cans equals low-calorie equals tastes like battery acid. So people started bitching and writing to the company and returning the cans demanding the old stuff.

Weirder still – even people who were not confusing the regular with the diet, even when they knew it was the same stuff, some of them complained the cola tastes different in the silver can. Don’t ask me if it’s psychological or maybe the old red cans still have traces of cocaine in them, all I know is that it’s been another PR nightmare for Coke. They’ve had to go back and reinstate the red cans, and somebody in R&D is getting a lump of coal for their Christmas bonus.

Now, I don’t have a problem with innovation, but it seems all the innovations these days are negative ones. Ooh, let’s take a ten-ounce bag of potato chips and put only eight ounces of chips in it while charging the same price. American ingenuity at its finest. Or all these HDTV 3D television sets. You can watch a Pixar movie; it looks like you’ve jumped into their universe. However, almost everything else you watch is in one-D, low definition, so your fifty-inch Samsung has all the visual beauty of a hallway security monitor. And don’t get me started on airplanes charging you extra for a sandwich, more inches of legroom and a place to stow your luggage. America is innovating us out of house and home.

Again, it’s not as if the Coca Cola people started sneaking Ex-Lax into the formula. They wouldn’t have to, but even so. And it’s not as if they did something racist or dangerous or mean-spirited. They just wanted Coke to be part of the seasonal onslaught of merry merchandising. Skeptical people might say they had nothing to lose from the design disaster. If it worked, if it worked. When it didn’t, look at all the free, and not especially damaging, publicity they got. Maybe it was all part of some master plan to keep Coke in the news.

I’m not that cynical, I’ll grant them an honest mistake, but either way, if they want to sell their product, save money and have the simplest marketing plan imaginable, all they have to do is hire me. I work cheap and I work smart. I will sit there at my desk and ask the different departments the only questions that matter: “Does Coca Cola still taste disgustingly sweet yet refreshingly corrosive?” “On Thanksgiving, can you fry a turkey or a moose in it?” “Is it still a dentist’s best friend?” “Can it still remove the paint from a 1987 Ford Taurus?” Yes? Great – sign my paycheck, we’re good for a decade. Oh, and pour me another Dr. Brown’s Crème Soda – regular, not diet, extra foam, and don’t be Jewish with the ice cubes.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches.

—> https://youtu.be/WCiD285AVRE

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=29469

Tag: soft drinks

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #61 (3/17/2013): Sugar Sugar

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #31 (12/4/2011): Coca Cola