So Delightfully "Square"

[robotnik2004]

One of the highlights of my sixty-first birthday celebration was when Tricia suggested we needed a "break" on our drive to Palm Springs, and we turned in at McDonald's. I had heard for years from our girls that the "big Mac" was really something "special," and while I've often credited Mrs. Nixon with making the best hamburgers in the world, we are both convinced that McDonald's runs a close second. ... The next time the cook has a night off we will know where to go for fast service, cheerful hospitality—and probably one of the best food buys in America.

—President Richard Nixon to McDonald's founder Ray Kroc, 1974

Comments

[krustukles.livejournal.com]

Reading Fast Food Nation huh? Wait till you get to the part about the shit in the meat. Yaaaghhh!

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Yeah, tell me about it. I actually read it last year, but just dug out the old file where I'd saved that Nixon letter. Along with the Jungle-esque what's-in-the-meat parts (grade F: circus animals, some filler), there were some great surreal anecdotes: "Wild West Day" at the Dachau McDonald's; the high-tech flavor labs off the New Jersey turnpike; and poor old Gorbachev giving a speech to a bunch of bored Popeye's chicken franchisees ("Margaret Thatcher was a lot better.")

The other quote I saved:

If we eat McDonald’s hamburgers and potatoes for a thousand years, we will become taller, our skin will become white, and our hair will be blonde.

--Den Fujita, the eccentric billionaire who brought McDonald's to Japan in the 1960s