Burger Diplomacy: Part I

Vincent: In Paris, you can buy a beer at McDonald’s. Also, you know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris?

Jules: They don’t call it a Quarter Pounder with Cheese?

Vincent: No, they got the metric system there, they wouldn’t know what the ---- a Quarter Pounder is.

Jules: What’d they call it?

Vincent: Royale With Cheese.

Jules: Royale with Cheese. What’d they call a Big Mac?

Vincent: Big Mac’s a Big Mac, but they call it Le Big Mac.

Jules: What do they call a Whopper?

Vincent: I dunno, I didn’t go into Burger King.

Why go into Burger King indeed. No one goes to Paris to go to Burger King-many don’t go to visit McDonald’s either for that matter. But it’s there, comfort food and surroundings around the globe. Many are not comfortable with this development.

Nevertheless, McDonald’s has been a part of our world, our vernacular, and lives for over 50 years and is now front and center in the battle for globalization. Nobody cares about Burger King or Wendy’s-it’s convenient to speak (read: smash windows) of the company at the top. There is no better example of a successful international enterprise than McDonald’s.

McDonald’s has become synonymous with everything that the anti-globalization movement dislikes-a corporate giant, Americanization, trampled rainforests, genetically modified foods.

Can a fast food restaurant chain really be this powerful? Can a burger undermine a nation’s history and culture?

McDonald’ has become the target because it’s values are the antithesis of those who despise globalization. In 1992 the Atlantic Monthly published an article about the two forces shaping the world. The first being the retribalization of the many parts of the world in what author Benjamin R. Barber called Jihad.

“The second is being borne in on us by the onrush of economic and ecological forces that demand integration and uniformity and that mesmerize the world with fast music, fast computers, and fast food -- with MTV, Macintosh, and McDonald's, pressing nations into one commercially homogenous global network: one McWorld tied together by technology, ecology, communications, and commerce.”

Like it or not McDonald’s is an important part of our society, our politics, and our integrated global world. It’s easy to be cynical about McDonald’s, about their environmental record, or their commitment to charitable giving. It is much more creative to defend them.

Everyone thinks they know McDonald’s-but do they? The McDonald brother’s opened the first store in 1948 in Southern California. In 1955 Ray Kroc founder of the McDonald’s Corporation opened his first franchise in Des Plaines, Illinois. By 1985 McDonald’s was added to the 30-company Dow Jones Industrial Average. This was recognition that McDonald’s was a major component to the US economy.

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