Monday, June 20, 2005
Impressed with Morgan Spurlock's "30 Days"
I really was impressed with Morgan "Supersize Me" Spurlock's new "30 Days" show, where the first episode featured him and his wife attempting to live on minimum wage for a whole month. Of course, people like Morgan and Barbara and that woman from Australia get to go back to their upper middle class lives after their stunt slumming. Couple of observations:
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These conditions, which I have lived under for more than 30 days I assure you, makes you much more sympathetic to the criminal element. The United States makes you feel like a sucker for playing by the rules. You just don’t get ahead. When I went over to the website I checked out the message boards where we find our usual right wing assholes, one of whom said that it made the United States look like a Third World country…and of course, for a lot of people, it is a third world country. We have playstations and cable but apart from that a lot of us are a bad accident or two away from the streets. I wish Morgan and his wife would do the same thing in France. They would live better on unemployment than most working Americans. American elites gnash their teeth at the working classes getting a decent standard of living. It’s the real reason they hate France.
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The emergency room scenes hit home for me. I don’t have health insurance. I made two emergency room visits over the last 13 years. I saw a doctor, both visits combined, for about 30 minutes. I came away with bills totaling $900. On the show, they’re treated for a sprained wrist and a urinary tract infection (had to embarrassing for the wife) and it costs them two emergency room visits at a price of $1200, which totally blew them out of their monthly budget.
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It answers the question as to why poor folks shop at Wal Mart. You can’t afford not to. I shop at union shop Giant Eagle a lot, but I can spend $40 at Wal Mart and live off of that for two weeks. Actually, I could do all of my shopping at Giant Eagle if they offered two things: 5 pounds of chicken breasts for $4.00 and $4.00 whole chickens. Must eat meat.
- I'm looking forward to upcoming episodes, especially the off the grid show.
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