Everybody loves a clown, right? Well, actually, no. When they were young, none of my children were particularly interested in clowns unless they were passing out candy or making balloon animals.
Now there is a group of adults who are not enamored with one particular clown, and they are calling for his retirement.

Corporate Accountability International, a self-appointed consumer watchdog who feels it is their business to tell companies what to do and to tell us what we can eat, has decided Ronald McDonald is a bad influence and has to go.

In a well-orchestrated publicity ploy, the group recently hosted a series of retirement parties at McDonald’s restaurants, urging consumers to sign retirement cards for the McDonald’s mascot. A spokeswoman for McDonald’s said the company wasn’t invited to the party, but said Ronald’s role as a brand ambassador hasn’t changed.

His role is to bring out the fun side of having meals with family and to promote an active lifestyle. The accountability group, a long-time critic of McDonald’s, said they have more than 200 photographs of “Ronald sightings” at schools and other child-focused events and aim to stop McDonald’s from gearing its advertising toward children in light of what they called a “fast-food-industry childhood obesity crisis.”

Yes, this is the same old, worn out rhetoric that consumer groups have been using for years. They blame the fast-food industry for making us fat and making our kids fat. They maintain, without proof, that marketing gimmicks like Happy Meals and Ronald McDonald force kids to eat too much fatty fast foods and thus become obese.

These dietary know-it-alls have even charged that when a fast-food restaurant is located near a school, the kids in that school get fat. This has been disproven by research, yet they keep pressing for restrictions on locations of these outlets.

What research has proven is that, when kids get off their duffs and get moving, they lose weight. A sedentary lifestyle in front of a television or video game console is the leading cause of childhood obesity, not diet.

First Lady Michelle Obama knows this all too well. She has taken on, as her cause, a program called Fuel Up and Play 60. It is designed to get kids to eat well-balanced diets and play outside at least one hour each day. If Corporate Accountability International really wanted to make a difference in childhood obesity, they would get behind programs like this rather than fretting about advertising of corporate America.

What is especially tragic about the misguided effort to force Ronald into retirement is that, even though he is funny looking and annoying, Ronald raises big bucks for a good cause.

“He is the heart and soul of Ronald McDonald House Charities, which lends a helping hand to families in their time of need,” McDonald’s told the Chicago Tribune in a written statement.
McDonald’s is committed to Ronald, and it is unlikely he will be exiting the company any time soon.

What we need is not a corporate accountability group but a personal accountability group. If we as individuals and as parents were more personally accountable for the food and lifestyle choices we make, we would stop blaming those who sell us food and focus on making better choices.

If a child is obese, the cause is not the commercials the child is exposed to but the parents who have failed to regulate the child’s lifestyle.

It is not Ronald McDonald that needs to retire but the clowns at Corporate Accountability International that need to take their old, outdated, and unsupported arguments and hang them up.

The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of Farm World. Readers with questions for Gary Truitt may write to him in care of this publication.