So I was watching Mansbridge One on One on CBC this afternoon. (Foreigners please note, it is not "The CBC".) He was interviewing Michael McCain, the CEO of Maple Leaf Foods, about the Listeriosis disaster of last summer. I was impressed by how McCain has always been very straightforward about what happened, and why. He told Mansbridge that he listened to the company's lawyers, who told him to deny and point fingers and assign blame elsewhere. He listened and then said, "I'm sorry, we're not going to do that." He then made reparations and apologized countless times over the ensuing months, both in public and in private. He told Canadians how he was going to do his best to make certain this wouldn't happen again, and then did those things he said he was going to do. He also told us the real truth, which is that there are no guarantees that bacteria won't ever show up in our food, no matter what we do.
Why can't more people be like that?
****
While watching Mansbridge a commercial came on for Lysol. That alone is weird enough, given the subject matter, but I found the commercial unsettling. It depicts a boy with a teddy bear waking up in the morning and going about his day, with his mother escorting him through the city on a bus ride and to the park. When the mother gets home, she sprays his teddy bear with Lysol. She then sprays his shoes and his mattress.
What the blue fuck, Mom? Are you some kind of germophobic freak? Your kid needs exposure to bacteria to build his immune system! You're going to destroy his liver by spraying him and everything he touches with chemicals? You bitch! No wonder we have superbugs - he went to the park and you practically threw him in an autoclave! That kid's gonna have issues.
