K-F'ed-up

Because there is quite literally nothing more important happening, consider this:

NEW YORK - A leading restaurant association has called for the cancellation of a TV commercial featuring Britney Spears’ estranged husband, Kevin Federline, as a failed rap star working in a fast-food eatery.

In a 30-second ad for Nationwide Insurance, Federline is shown dreaming he is a rap star but then snaps out of it to face reality — he’s working at a burger restaurant.

The commercial is due to be aired Feb. 4 during the Super Bowl, advertising’s biggest televised sporting event of the year. Last year’s Super Bowl drew more than 90 million viewers.

Like most sensible Americans, I plan to spend Feb 4th locked in the basement watching Warhol films, and hoping against hope for some outcome that will make neither the Mannings nor this guy happy, but this is kind of a puzzle. To equate working in fast food with failure as a person is a ubiquitous a trope as to equate the idea that having a daugher who is a stripper with failure as a parent.* In my day job, I routinely face the concern that English majors will end up "flipping burgers." More immediately relevant, in one of its Hemi ads, John Reep (thank you internets) daydreams at the drive through window while his hemi driving patron demands his food. (Here, at the 17 second mark.) Not a peep, as far as I know.

But now, "the National Restaurant Association’s chief executive, Steven Anderson, has written to Nationwide saying the ad leaves the impression that working in a restaurant is demeaning and unpleasant, and asking that the commercial be dumped."As a refresher, the National Restaurant Association does not mean some kind of grange hall where, like, Gabrielle Hamilton and Judy Rodgers trade ramp receipts. No,  this is the trade organization that warns of minimum wage hikes, and gave us the truth about Fast Food Nation:

Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser is one individual's biased attempt to convince the American consumer to stop eating food from restaurants they enjoy frequenting. In addition to acting like the "food police," and trying to coerce the American consumer to never eat fast-food again, the author recklessly disparages an industry that has contributed tremendously to our nation by providing millions of consumers the option of choosing a range of high-quality food items that they love, providing tremendous job and career opportunities and boosting the national economy.

So you might want to take what they say with a grain of salt, or, 1040 mg of sodium, if you prefer. Once again, the fast food industry sets up shop in the realm of simulacra. After all, why make working in fast food less "demeaning and unpleasant" when you can just throw K-Fed under the bus?

*See?