A SHOUT FROM COPENHAGEN: That Big Yellow 'M' -- I'm Hatin' It!

That big yellow ‘M’ with its loopy humps – like breasts really. How diabolically ingenious. The word for mother in practically every language – Mom, Mommy, mere, mor, moder, mama, mutter, mamasita, even in Korean! – begins with an ‘m’ sound – the sound an infant makes when hungrily moving its lips toward the nipple, the sound we make when something is delicious: Mmmmmm….

And those mother-jumpers have commandered it – just as the jingoists would commandeer our flag.

It is a cancer on the earth, franchises everywhere, in every capital city of the world and in the smaller and medium-sized towns, too. Not just in the U.S. but everywhere, Paris, London, Rome, Moscow, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Beijing… Destroying the health of the poor, of kids, ruining the architectural symmetry of ancient cities, adding their ugly emporia to the urban sprawl along with all the other franchise burger, chicken, taco and coffee joints.

Where are the great old American diners, the one-of-a-kind places owned by one man or woman or couple? Where have they gone? Starved out, that’s where!

Okay, maybe twice a year – because I’ve got a bodacious hang-over which craves grease and fat – I skulk into the gaudy red and yellow joint behind its gaudy ‘M’, cap pulled low, and order one, even two cheeseburgers and wolf them down, get a belly ache on top of my headache and go home to crawl into bed.

Why do I do it? Why do I support this junk food factory which plants its fat ugly butt and shows its ludicrous Ronald clown-face on the best, most historic corners of my beloved ancient capital?

I mean it would be okay if there were one or two of them around and if they would low-profile their gaudy facades, but no. They want to be everywhere, to be seen, they want to fatten themselves with big bucks behind their ugly signs that say, I’m lovin’ it – 200 meters.

Well I’m hatin’ it! And I’m hatin’ what they and their kind do to our world. And I hate the fact that this has become the face of American culture throughout the world. What we are most famous for “culturally.”

Why don’t we boycott those fuggers? All of them. Starve them out. Or at least pinch them hard as we can. We Americans can do a hell of a lot better than that!

Let’s put a big black X through that ugly yellow M!

Greetings from this ancient capital!
Thomas E. Kennedy
(www.thomasekennedy.com)