Stop Picking On the Fat Kid

The National Legal and Policy Center (Falls Church, Va.) has called on Doctor’s Associates Inc. (Milford, Conn.), parent company of Subway Restaurants, to stop a European in-store advertising campaign designed to “exploit anti-American sentiment” in countries like Germany.

The Subway restaurants in Germany now feature tray-liners and posters promoting the film, “Super Size Me.” They portray an obese Statue of Liberty holding a package of fries and a hamburger and begin with the bold headline “Why Are Americans So Fat?”

“Subway has defined a new low in corporate behavior with this campaign,” said Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center. “Inflaming cultural tensions to increase market share is immoral and dangerous. Americans deserve to know about Subway’s campaign to insult us abroad and to attack our national symbols. We agree with House majority leader Tom DeLay [R, Texas] when he says, ‘This is every bad stereotype about corporate America come true.’ ”

The National Legal and Policy Center also said it would open an investigation into Subway and its financial connections with the film “Super Size Me” and its director, comedian Morgan Spurlock.

To see the actual tray-liner, visit http://www.nlpc.org/. The translation of the tray-liner is as follows: HEAD: “Why are the Americans so fat?” Michael Moore quote: “The only time I have been scared for my life has been going through a McDonald’s drive-thru.”

In the movie, Spurlock, a New York filmmaker, lived on fast food in a self-experiment for 30 days of only McDonald’s products and gained weight and reported a raised liver count and blood count.