Is anybody heartbroken over the demise of Hostess? Yes, some jobs will be lost. But maybe youth obesity will be mitigated just a little bit. Probably not. Plenty of crap being cranked out by other companies.
Still, I do have fond memories of Twinkies in the Sixth Grade when I was reading The Lord of the Rings and imagined that my Twinkie was actually the golden Elven cake Lembas.
I also remember when my mother switched over from white bread to wheat bread. I wasn’t happy with the switch at first, and one of the annoying kids at school would tease me about my “dirty bread” sandwiches. But it wasn’t long before I couldn’t go back. Seeing that nutritionist on TV squeeze a loaf of Wonder Bread into the size of a softball probably helped.
….
I was watching television last night and noticed writing at the bottom of a McDonald’s commercial saying, “Owned and operated locally in Humboldt County.” Is economic localism having an actual impact that large companies feel compelled to explain their franchizing systems?
Addendum: I haven’t verified whether the information is accurate, but if so, then blaming the unions for the company’s demise would seem erroneous at minimum.
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November 16, 2012 at 9:41 am
Not A Native
Those “some jobs will be lost” are union jobs. This closure is a labor dispute, the company is busting the union. Almost certainly the brand and products will continue under new ownership but will be nonunion. I don’t know for a fact but saw a comment that the company’s largest creditor is the union. If so, liquidation may wipe out retired worker pensions along with the layoffs of current workers. Ask yourself, who benefits and who will suffer as a result of the liquidation?
As for public health, I don’t think twinkies and cupcakes are much different nutritionally from most other snacks, including many of those labeled as healthy. Given that the products will likely continue and many alternative junk foods are out there with more being developed, its nonsense to even suggest that liquidation could mitigate obesity.
November 16, 2012 at 10:06 am
Anonymous
Yes NAN, it is exactly a union busting move. And your question “Ask yourself, who benefits and who will suffer as a result of the liquidation?” is spot on.
November 16, 2012 at 10:27 am
Yep
It’s blowing smoke. The big name brand products will be sold off and continue under new parent companies, and the overpaid suits at Hostess will move onto other lucrative management positions with other corporations. The only people losing in this proposition are the workers.
The question is… will this move deter other employees from standing up for their rights in the future, or will it spur companies to listen to unions and take them seriously? If anything is to be gained from this Hostess situation, workers for other corporations must not back down.
November 16, 2012 at 11:08 am
no
18k jobs is just some? You heartless bastards! The company was already having problems making things work. Yet the workers went on strike. Rule #1, if you do not have something to sell, you cannot pay workers.
November 16, 2012 at 12:35 pm
Joe Blow
It maybe about “union busting,” but ultimately it is about the LOOTING of America.
November 16, 2012 at 12:38 pm
Andy Stunich
No one will benefit except for whoever picks up the liquidated brands at bargain basement prices, but this is not union busting. The company has employees in various unions and in negotiations made it clear that it could only offer employees so much and that if the offer was not accepted the company would be liquidated in bankruptcy which is exactly what is happening. All of the unions except the baker’s union agreed to company terms. The baker’s union refused and caused everyone to lose their jobs in an economy wherein they are unlikely to find new jobs. This is not union busting. This is a union busting a company and the other unionized employees. Now there will be even more people on the government dole. If they do find a job it will be part time because companies are limiting employees to thirty hours per week or less to avoid the mandates of Obamacare. The only upside is that some junk food will temporarily disappear from store shelves.
November 16, 2012 at 1:56 pm
Fred Mangels
Andy wrote, “This is a union busting a company and the other unionized employees. “.
Agreed. Perhaps not unlike the Eastern Airlines debacle of years ago? Eastern Airlines was in trouble financially. The unions, perhaps feeling they had the airline over a barrel, decided to go on a big strike. That put the nail in the coffin of Eastern Airlines. The unions sure showed them.
And Erik’s comment, “Yes, some jobs will be lost. But maybe youth obesity will be mitigated just a little bit..”, is so typical of the Left. A good example why this country will likely never end its downhill slide. By the time we get rid of all the companies that Erik and his friends don’t like, nobody will have a job.
November 16, 2012 at 2:08 pm
bob
i think it’s wrong to blame the bakers’ union. this is at least the second time the company has tried to coerce its unions into accepting cutbacks with the threat of bankruptcy/liquidation. the private equity/vulture capitalist owners of the hoho brand need to feed. they don’t care if the company and its workers go out the door. they’ll make their money either way. can anyone say willard romney? or bain capital?
November 16, 2012 at 2:09 pm
bolithio
November 16, 2012 at 2:09 pm
bob
psst i never liked wonder bread, twinkies or hohos anyway.
November 16, 2012 at 2:13 pm
Tom Sebourn
Hostess is using all the wrong ingredients. If they were following the trends they would use wholesome ingredients instead of High Fructose Corn Syrup and bad fats. They will probably come back after bankruptcy in a different form but I say good riddance. Little Debbie is next if she doesn’t clean up her act.
November 16, 2012 at 4:44 pm
john hardin
Are you kidding Tom, Little Debbie is the payday loan of nutrition. As long as we have poverty in America, Little Debbie will be there to exploit it for profit. For some snack cake investment advice, check out:.
http://lygsbtd.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/on-the-money-the-snack-cake-wars/
November 16, 2012 at 6:17 pm
Fred Mangels
They will probably come back after bankruptcy in a different form but I say good riddance
Here we go again. By the time you folks get done shutting down every company you don’t think is politically correct, nobody will have a job.
Need I remind you all that somebody needs to pay for all the government jobs you’re so enamored of? I’d be interested in seeing how much in state and federal taxes will be lost over this, and how much we’ll be paying for unemployment and other government costs as a result of this closure.
You guys are SICK!
November 16, 2012 at 6:36 pm
Plain Jane
The company was asking for more concessions on wages and benefits because their hedge fund owners had, as they so often do, piled on debt to put it in their pockets. Now they want the workers, who already took pay and benefit cuts when the hedge fund bought them, to pay the debt from their wages.
November 16, 2012 at 8:31 pm
Eric Kirk
Fred – I don’t know much about the Hostess situation, but the Eastern Airlines incident back in the 1980x was a deliberate misuse of bankruptcy laws to bust a union. Lorenzo bought up Continental to move assets back and forth, declaring bankruptcy in one company so the other could cannibalize it. It was so blatant that even some right wingers saw through it.
November 16, 2012 at 8:32 pm
Eric Kirk
And as to my being a “leftist” because I’m concerned that the mass production of this crap is causing child obesity and adult onset diabetes at an epidemic level, well, this is the market in play, right? They certainly weren’t “regulated to death.”
Jobs are not the end all and be all in consideration. Closing Auschwitz upped the unemployment rate.
November 16, 2012 at 10:14 pm
ED Denson
According to a piece (on maps) that I caught on NPR this evening, the furtherest you can be from a McDonalds in the lower 48, is about 90 miles and that 90 miles is in South Dakota, the speaker thought.
November 16, 2012 at 10:40 pm
Jim
I thought it was funny that when I went to grab one from the corner store today at lunch, I couldn’t find them because they only had little debbie baked goods. Safeway was all entenmanns.
November 17, 2012 at 6:44 am
Mitch
Leaving aside union vs. hedge fund, nutrition vs high fructose, etc., etc., why does the planet need national brands of “snack cakes?”
Are local bakeries unable to bake suitable goods?
Or do the goods require national ad campaigns to convince people to eat them?
Or do they require nation-level mass production to deliver the goods at an acceptable selling price?
This is one product brand for whose demise I will feel no nostalgia.
November 17, 2012 at 8:11 am
Not A Native
That’s just arrogant. The planet doesn’t ‘need’ anything, its always just fine however things are.
Some people(Mitch) have profound inner emptiness felt as painful need, want, covetousness, and desire. And in their egoism, they’re certain their personal discomfort must also be shared by ‘the planet’ or even the universe.
November 17, 2012 at 8:13 am
Mitch
All because I don’t like Phil Crandall, NaN?
November 17, 2012 at 8:56 am
Eric Kirk
It is elitist not to like ho hos!
November 17, 2012 at 9:12 am
bolithio
The issue seems to be the big companies (the job creators) only want to make the maximum money possible. If they cant do that, since they are so well off, they would rather not. Like Apple, who if they moved their ipod/ipad production back to the united states they would loose 1/3 (guess) of their profit – which would still net them immense profits… yet Steve Jobs will be remembered as such a hero, but not for creating sci-fi slave cities in Asia to meet the share holders wishes.
Is it just me, or is it unreasonable to assume we can regulate greed with laws and politics? Like me, who felt that the timber industry needed to be changed from within – its going to take a new business model to emerge where the purpose of the company is to sustain jobs and pay wages – not to grow as rapidly as possible and die. The Romneys of the world will be here until they die. Our best option is to support companies that do it right.
And for the first time, I agree with NAN. The planet is twinkie neutral.
November 17, 2012 at 9:47 am
Plain Jane
You can pass laws and regulations which make greed expensive and at the same time collect the funds required to rebuild our infrastructure and keep the “extraneous people” alive and prepared when the economy improves.
November 17, 2012 at 10:17 am
Mitch
bolithio,
I’d be interested to hear you expand on how you think you can change a company from within.
I know you’ve not liked when I’ve mentioned in the past that I don’t doubt your goals but do doubt whether they are really available to you. I didn’t mean that as an insult, and I’m genuinely curious about what you have to say about changing corporate cultures.
In your opinion, does a company have to be privately-held for that to work?
If public, what do you do about stockholder complaints? How do you deal with a board of directors when they are told that profits could be higher if only (your “stakeholder” request here) were eliminated?
What happens if the idealists who change a company’s culture leave?
What happens if the idealists remain, but have tempered their idealism because they have to send their kids to an expensive college?
What happens when you do everything right, but that means your product costs 2% more than your competitor who produces the exact same product but in a less desirable way, and your major customers buy only on price?
November 17, 2012 at 10:51 am
Anonymous
Do ya think no more Twinkies is the reason for the latest Israeli aggression toward Palestine?
November 17, 2012 at 11:28 am
bolithio
Im not convinced you can change a company from within, at least without a hollywood script… you would never change Walmart just by working there. No doubt about that.
Your questions show the weakness in the current model.
Ill use my daydream example. The biggest issue getting our new ‘kind’ corporation going is the initial investment and how it will be paid back. But lets pretend my daddy is super rich.
I am going to open a lumber mill here on the north coast. In my business plan I will set salary caps on all aspects of the corporation. All profits will be distributed back into the company in the form of fair and reasonable bonuses to employees, maintain state of the art equipment, and investing in growth in a smart and sustainable way (most mills boom and bust with a hire-layoff cycle).
I would brand that model into the flesh of the company and hopefully it would last. If sustainable jobs are the key to a future sustainable economy, perhaps more idealistic rich people will do the same (or groups of like mind people secure loans to run a new business this way). Any ‘board of directors’ or CEOs would have joined the company knowing what they are getting.
Becuase we dont have the pressures traditional mills have to stake holders, we can offer a consistent product at a competitive price. when boom periods of third world wood exports cut into our profits, so be it, we sell the lumber at lower process for a time. We should be able to maintain our workforce and pay rates because the company is not operating on quarterly growth for success. We invest and pad the coffers in the good times and weather the bad times easily because we haven’t removed the wealth from the company by paying off share holders.
Idealistic malarkey Im sure.
November 17, 2012 at 4:08 pm
Ernie's Place
I really thought that the legal profession would be the most disappointed with the loss of Twinkies.
Remember when Dan White freaked out on Twinkies, killed San Francisco’s gay supervisor Harvey Milk? Local property owner and San Francisco lawyer Doug Schmidt saved White from harsher punishment with the Twinkie Defense.
Doug Schmidt claims that he never mentioned Twinkies in the trial, but instead he claimed that White was freaked out on HoHos and Ding Dongs.
twinkie defense
November 17, 2012 at 4:38 pm
Anonymous
Remember when Dan White freaked out on Twinkies, killed San Francisco’s gay supervisor Harvey Milk?
Israel must be eating too many Twinkies.
November 18, 2012 at 7:52 am
Mitch
bolithio,
Your comments don’t strike me as malarkey at all, and you won’t find me criticizing idealism. Perhaps what you are describing is do-able at a small level, if it’s run by one person or by a small group of friends. If there were substantial success, I think the owner or owning-group would have to be resistant to a buyout by a corporation realizing how much of the short-term profits you were leaving on the table. In the world of public companies, that’s accomplished for management through what are called poison pills.
But I think the biggest problems you’ll have are with customers and employees. You may find the bulk of your customers to be fair weather friends, ready to negotiate your prices down beyond what you are able to sustain (“sorry, it’s just business. nothing personal, right?”) You may also find your employees are more prone than you’d like to determining their value to the company and leaving when the salary caps begin to intrude on their being reimbursed for that value. The mediocre ones will stay with you, as will the best who believe in what you’re doing.
These are all reasons that I believe the control, almost always, has to come from outside any individual company, to set a fair set of standards that everyone needs to play by. When a society increases the floor standards across the board, it keeps those who LOVE the standards from being crushed. The problem, then, is when the government is captured by those who love profits more than standards — and politicians are good at supporting such people while giving lip service to standards.
Although this is hardly an example of an environmentalist company, you might check out the management design of W.L. Gore and Associates. They have the enormous credential of having survived for at least 50 years now, I think.
But I still believe (and I really don’t mean this as an insult) that the biggest problem for “change from the inside of the business” is self-deception, where the “change” one seeks to implement from the inside turns out to be change in one’s own insides, rather than change in the company one hoped to change.
November 18, 2012 at 7:54 am
Mitch
4:38,
The missiles are called Fajr-5. I’d never heard them called Twinkies.
November 18, 2012 at 11:01 am
moviedad
This company will re-emerge next month as a non-union company, maybe they’ll call it: “Hostess II- we screwed our workers so we could keep paying our executives huge amounts in salaries..”
November 18, 2012 at 11:56 am
Unk John
“That’s just arrogant. The planet doesn’t ‘need’ anything, its always just fine however things are.”
NaN, are you serious about that? I can understand it if you mean the planet and only the planet. However, I live here and I would like to think that the planet will continue to provide some of the basic things I need.
It looks to me as though Mitch’s statement has a lot to do with “buy locally.” A local bakery should be able to provide what you need, thus circumventing the nonsense of shipping finished goods from far off places. The advantages of that should be obvious.
November 18, 2012 at 12:45 pm
Plain Jane
It would be interesting to try Barbara Kingsolver’s family’s challenge to live on what was produced locally for a year. They allowed for exceptions like coffee and a few other items, I think it was one exception per family member. They succeeded and it brought them closer as a family and to their neighbors and community.
November 18, 2012 at 3:27 pm
713
Why doesnt the union buy the company?
November 18, 2012 at 6:41 pm
Not A Native
I give Unk John points for honesty. He acknowledges concern about welfare ‘the planet’ is really concern for his welfare; that he personally gets something from ‘the planet’.(That’s really Mitch’s concern too, but he’s too dishonest to admit it)
As for ‘living local’, its a documented fact that people here before 1850 lived almost exclusively locally. So its no mystery how it can be accomplished. And I believe they did it without a need of coffee, bananas, cotton, nylon, rubber, or metal nails.
Of course today it would be somewhat different because much of the local resources are owned by individuals. Accessing those resources requires trading with them personally. But its not completely different now because before 1850 access to the most lucrative resources was allocated by agreements among groups.
BTW, back to twinkies. Here’s an AP story with more background. Some quotes:
The shuttering means the loss of about 18,500 jobs. Hostess said employees at its 33 factories were sent home and operations suspended
Hostess has said it’s received inquiries about buying parts of the company. …analysts’ reports that Thomasville, Ga.-based Flowers Foods Inc. and private equity food investment firm Metropoulos & Co. are likely suitors. Metropoulos owns Pabst Brewing Co., while Flowers Foods makes Nature’s Own bread, Tastykake treats and other baked goods.
The company had been contributing $100 million a year in pension costs for workers; the new contract offer would’ve slashed that to $25 million a year, in addition to wage cuts and a 17 percent reduction in health benefits.
Hostess came under fire this spring after it was revealed that nearly a dozen executives received pay hikes of up to 80 percent last year even as the company was struggling.
November 18, 2012 at 8:55 pm
Unk John
NaN, I’m sorry, I just kinda figured that everyone would understand that I was speaking metaphorically. I am concerned that “the planet” should remain capable of sustaining life in its present form. If you are implying some sort of selfishness on the parts of Mitch and myself, then for my part, I plead guilty.
Some of my concerns can be made much easier to deal with if we do learn to live locally. I am pleased to see that you know that to do it is doable. I also agree with at least what you say about distribution.
Obviously, politics can get in the way of progress in such matters. Our chances of gaining any ground are diminished if we argue with people with whom we have a common interest.
So maybe you can help me understand why you thought that Mitch’s post was arrogant. The post included:
“Leaving aside union vs. hedge fund, nutrition vs high fructose, etc., etc., why does the planet need national brands of “snack cakes?”
Are local bakeries unable to bake suitable goods?
Or do the goods require national ad campaigns to convince people to eat them?
Or do they require nation-level mass production to deliver the goods at an acceptable selling price?”
Don’t those statements at least kinda sorta smack of “living locally?”
November 18, 2012 at 9:25 pm
Plain Jane
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/18/1162645/-Giving-Thanks-for-Hostess-Workers
November 19, 2012 at 5:40 am
Mitch
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/17/twinkie-icon-american-capitalism
November 19, 2012 at 6:54 am
Plain Jane
That’s hilarious, Mitch. Such snacks were too expensive for my family so I never developed the taste for “the high tones of saccharine vanilla and, just after you eat it, that distinctive aftertaste. It burns slightly; it’s chemical, and speaks of interstate gas station stores, bad choices, and poverty.” My mother baked almost every day and, while I may have envied my friends their bright pink marshmallow concoctions (those and little bags of chips were a sign of affluence at my school) my mother’s creations were delicious and fresh and it was our house my friends wanted to hang out at after school, stuffing themselves on my mother’s goodies and fresh milk.
As to Twinkies’ main competitor, I took one bite of a Little Debbies pie and had to brush my teeth to get rid of the overwhelming greasiness. Horrid! Why people are so willing to pay so much for such horrid and unhealthy food is a mystery. How hard is it to put a cupcake or a few cookies into a container for your kid’s lunch?
November 19, 2012 at 7:10 am
bolithio
Twinkies though, are quite good. I think for the sake of this conversation we should all go eat a twinkies.
November 19, 2012 at 8:32 am
Mitch
I used to love them when I was a kid (and ding dongs, if those were the chocolaty-wax equivalent). I think if you grow up on them, they don’t make you nauseous unless you read the ingredients.
The loss of the 18,500 jobs represents at least 18,500 personal disasters, and the management is probably guilty of theft were it not for the idiosyncracies of our legal system. But if people continue wanting essence of twinkie, I’m sure the factories will be bought up and continue churning out “product” while paying the workers less than they had been making and the “brand owners” more, because they are the magical job creators.
You’d undoubtedly sell fewer twinkies if you didn’t have the branding advantage, and then where would we be? It would be like trying to eat a hamburger instead of a Big Mac — doesn’t have nearly the same wonderful (if fake) associations you can get from twenty years of continual advertising.
Romney’s ‘Merica.
November 19, 2012 at 11:07 am
Not A Native
OK Unk John. Thanks for reading my post carefully and replying thoughtfully. I’ll try to reciprocate. BTW, cupcakes and sno balls are my favorites, twinkies taste too bland to me.
First, I see Mitch’s post as arrogant because he used ‘the planet’ as justification for his choices for obtaining his interests. Essentially he equated the planet’s well being with his own personal well being. That’s arrogant, IMO.
As to localism, my purpose in citing pre-1850 was twofold. First to make a gentle point about the hypocrisy of those who say they are truly committed to localism but refuse to live the lifestyle it would entail. I believe more are simply survivalists, they will live a local lifestyle only when they have no other choice.
My second purpose was to raise the question What is the actual(good) reason for choosing “local”? A pre-1850′s lifestyle is unacceptable for most all localism advocates, they wouldn’t even consider willingly choosing it. So what is the “right amount” of localism? That’s really a values question, parallel to the Buddhist concern of “Right Livelihood”. After all lifestyle IS livelihood.
If localism is to really be a positive thing here and now, not a ‘last recourse’ or ‘insurance policy’ against ‘societal collapse’, ‘peak oil’, or ‘end days’. Or a means to ease the social stigma of poverty. It has to ‘make sense’ to people as we really are(with competitive, acquisitive, as well as cooperative natures), rather than to some ideological pure ‘ideal person’. Ideals are never practical because they’re thought up by people motivated by desires for people to not be human, often because they’re profoundly disappointed and disgruntled.
I’ve got personal views of ‘Right Localism’ which are pretty close to the simplicity living movement ideas. And national and international products and standardized brands using economies of scale aren’t necessarily bad. Not that I’ve figured it all out. If I do, maybe I’ll start my own blog.
November 19, 2012 at 12:00 pm
Thorstein Veblen
Bolithio, your model harkens back to the Pac Lum of the 1970′s, and look what happened to it.
Voluntary good stewardship doesn’t work without structural change in the economy, primarily to a tax code that currently rewards equity capital and wall street greed, and does nothing to reconcile private decision making and the public good. In fact, our system typically favors private interests even if contrary to public interests.
For 200 years our universities, religion, and culture have promoted the idea that pursuit of personal and private interests results in optimal social outcomes. Ridiculous, of course, but continues even more pervasive today.
November 19, 2012 at 12:55 pm
Fred Mangels
The Sacramento Bee just announced a judge has said Hostess has to mediate with the union.
http://www.sacbee.com/2012/11/19/4997743/judge-orders-hostess-to-mediate.html
November 19, 2012 at 4:54 pm
Unk John
NaN,
Dammit, I can’t disagree in principle with anything you said. However, I think you’re reading something into Mitch’s statement that I don’t see. Anyway, that’s not the issue.
I am in solid agreement with your thoughts on “the right amount” of localism. That is where the arguments will fly. I mean, I have to admit that even though I believe in buying locally I still purchase things that have traveled a long way to get here. Like everyone else, I attribute it to some specter that I can’t control.
I would like to think that merely pushing the concept in a way that, as you said, makes sense then maybe we can improve. Even at a slow pace, it should help. Sometimes, those small steps provide encouragement to continue. It’s like weight loss – even a few pounds can make a person see the value of continuing.
November 19, 2012 at 5:01 pm
Not A Native
Eric, you there? Likely you thought this would be a humorous flippant topic to poke fun at the twinkie junkies and celebrate some sort of ‘rough justice’ for those who enable junk food cravings. But its become a serious topic that shows “junk” food isn’t so simplistic and people’s food choices and economic interests in food production aren’t just a big joke. How about admitting you missed the real story by trivializing it from inside your pseudo-progressive bubble?
November 19, 2012 at 5:36 pm
Eric Kirk
I still think the world would be better off without this crap poisoning kids across the globe, but I do acknowledge that the story has become more serious as the unions get blamed. We all know that somebody will buy out the trademarks and recipes, for what they’re worth, and continue cranking them out. But I suspect that the underlying story is that they aren’t making the money they used to, not because of union wages or even corporate mismanagement, but because consumers are maybe starting to react to the information out there and not buy so much of this crap. There’s no “solution” to save those jobs from that.
November 19, 2012 at 7:35 pm
713
Which costs more, a million dollar bonus for the ceo or a 2.00 per hour raise for 18,000 workers?
November 19, 2012 at 10:49 pm
Ernie Branscomb
Twinkies are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to unwholesome foods. Some foods have so much preservative in them that they no longer even taste like food.
I get the “Shop Local” thing, but some products are not available locally, like coffee, as stated. What becomes important is balance of trade, where we don’t drain our economic pond. We are now flopping around in the muck at the bottom of the economic pond. We need to export an equal value to what we import.
Corporate executives are more concerned about cashing-in rather than building the company. The Hostess execs are asking the bankruptcy judges to allow them to liquidate the company and spread the assets amongst themselves…Several millions of dollars. They got theirs, and screw the company.
November 19, 2012 at 11:00 pm
Ernie Branscomb
Walmart is cashing in big-time on the “open on Thanksgiving” for and early Black Friday. There is hardly anyone in America that doesn’t know that Walmart will be open. Walmart got tons of free publicity, and I don’t know of any Walmart shopper that would give a rats-ass about a picket line.
The times they are a changing.
It will no longer do any good to go on strike. The corporations have done an end-run on the unions and moved jobs offshore. We need to elect politicians that will bring jobs back to these shores. JOBS.
November 20, 2012 at 8:08 am
bolithio
I still think the world would be better off without this crap poisoning kids across the globe
While im not calling twinkies a wholesome food, I think that statement is just not true. Twinkies are not poisoning kids and certainly not around the world. A parents choice to allow their children to eat one or more twinkies everyday is not the fault of the twinkie. Im sure the twinkie would be easier to defend if the context wasn’t confounded by this hostile corporate shutdown. But the blame for poor health rests solely in the parents lap in terms of modeling behavior/diet and moderation.
November 20, 2012 at 11:46 am
Eric Kirk
I strongly disagree with blaming the parents solely bolithio. The marketing of the crap is aimed at children. If you notice, the sugary crap cereals have very colorful boxes with cartoon characters on them, and they are shelved at the eye level of children, who then pressure their parents – many of whom are working hard just to get food on the table and can’t win every fight with their kids. I know, “parents should be stronger” and all, but human nature being what it is, I put the primary blame on the marketing techniques which prey on those weakness. And yes, it is poison, because it isn’t consumed in small amounts, or the business model would fail. It requires habitual consumers.
November 20, 2012 at 4:27 pm
Ernie's Place
Eric
You base your opinion on not having ever worked in a retail store. It is easy to sort out the good parents from the bad. Good parents have no problem keeping their children under control. It seems to be in the close association that the parents and children have. The kids know where the line is and they test it, but they are able to accept that their parents mean what they say.
Other parents come in the store, turn their children loose to run amuck. The parent takes a break while the kids pretty much destroy the store. Woe be unto the clerk that scolds their children. The parents threaten you, and point out that you shouldn’t have things out to temp children.
I’m not complaining, I’m just hoping that you are in the first group of parents. Good parents are indeed appreciated, not only by store clerks, but also children respond and thrive under good parenting. Stores are a great place to teach your children respect and manners.
Some parents have no problem dealing with eye level Twinkies, it’s an opportunity to act like a good parent an give yours kids values.
November 20, 2012 at 4:50 pm
Eric Kirk
We do keep our kids in check, and we don’t give in when they push. But it can be really hard sometimes, and if you’re really tired from a long day’s work it’s especially challenging. Like I said, you can blame the parents for weakness, but the marketing is geared towards that weakness and the inability of parents to resist it.
Just like you can say that kids’ should resist smoking cigarettes, but not blame the pushers at all. Why is it that the focus on “individual responsibility” is all aimed at the tempted, and none of it aimed at the temptor?
November 20, 2012 at 5:24 pm
Ernie's Place
Nobody said that being a good parent is easy. I was very lucky, my child was perfect, she was a delight to take out to dinner, and she was never a problem in a store. I feel really bad for people that have less than perfect children, especially when they are tired.
I have a feeling that your children would have no problems in a store. It’s a lot easier for children to learn when “the line” never moves and they are never allowed to cross it.
I always praised my daughter for being a good kid and made sure that she knew that I thought that she was inherently good, and not that I would in anyway punish her for being bad. She never smoked either. Somehow she thought of smoking as a vile disgusting habit. The one problem that I had with her was she always liked to have the latest fad fashion. I guess that I didn’t fight that peer pressure hard enough
November 20, 2012 at 5:45 pm
Eric Kirk
Asher is easy. Lilith is a little more difficult as she can be impulsive. But she knows how to behave.
And they aren’t exposed to much television advertising, which is helpful.
My father had a technique to keep us quiet on car rides. He bought us a bag of candy, jelly beans or something, and every time we piped up he threw one out the window. We would be welcome to whatever was left at the end of the trip. Worked like a charm.
November 20, 2012 at 6:08 pm
Bolithio
…and if you’re really tired from a long day’s work it’s especially challenging.
Ah yes. I completely relate to that.
Along with the millions of people who don’t vote. Its hard work to be “on” all the time. Do you hold the same empathy/forgiveness of non-voters for the state of the Union? (Who cant win every battle and are prone to eye-level advertising?) It seems perfectly analogous; the health of our system literally and figuratively.
I too have empathy for the parent, Im going through it right now. But being tiered starts to sound like a cop-out. As Ernie observes, some parents do it right, some not so good…
November 20, 2012 at 6:17 pm
Plain Jane
That’s a great technique, Eric. My mom just dosed us all with Dramamine and woke us up when we got there.
November 20, 2012 at 6:39 pm
Eric Kirk
But why isn’t it a “cop out” when corporations just say they’re trying to make a buck when they deliberately prey on the parents who do it “not so good?” Do they have absolutely no responsibility in the matter?
November 20, 2012 at 7:55 pm
bolithio
Of course not. But if people aren’t trying, how can we expect there to be any accountability? Still I wonder what you think; should we put the blame for our corporate-greed era on the corporations and the people who run them or the people who sit idle a let them get away with it?
(And I love the jelly bean trick too. Have you tried it with your kids?)
November 20, 2012 at 11:40 pm
Unk John
Eric,
wo
I remember a Bellingham to San Francisco trip where your father and I didn’t throw any jelly beans out the window … we were more of a mind to throw YOU out the window. Telling you that worked pretty well too.
November 20, 2012 at 11:42 pm
Unk John
wo?
I have no clue where that came from. Sorry.