’30 Days’ of Supersized Guilt
Morgan Spurlock shows how difficult it is
to pretend to be poor.
By Dan Gainor
June 16, 2005
The new Morgan Spurlock documentary ’30 Days’ highlighted the
fantasy of “reality” TV as Spurlock and his fiancé pretended to live
life on minimum wage surrounded by cameras. Instead of teaching
important lessons about saving, personal responsibility and the
value of education, Spurlock relied on emotion to try to convince
viewers the minimum was too low.
The June 15, 2005, program tried to duplicate the success of
Spurlock’s Oscar-nominated attack on McDonald’s “Super Size Me,”
where he stopped exercising and ate 5,000 calories of fast food
every day. In this show, he tried to explain how you can “change
your life” in just 30 days, in this case by acting poor.
It’s an act that has gotten him on all three major morning shows
to promote “30 Days.” On the May 23, 2005, “Today” Spurlock claimed
that personal responsibility about what we eat is “huge.” ” I mean,
personal responsibility is the part of the equation that you can
never negate,” he explained. But personal responsibility never
cropped up as a theme in his latest work. At one point he met a
fellow worker named Alfred – a 22-year-old with four children – and
never questioned the man’s own decisions.
Spurlock, whose first film grossed more than $30 million, decided
to change his life by pretending to be poor. While he has claimed
“Super Size Me” didn’t make him a millionaire, he didn’t plead
poverty. “I haven’t even made a million dollars,” he told Reuters.
At the beginning of the episode, he explained that he and his fiancé
Alexandra Jamieson had been “living the good life” since his movie.
Jamieson underlined this by pointing out the earrings she was
wearing “cost more than my college education.”
Soon after that, they delved into the fantasy world of minimum
wage in Columbus, Ohio. They left behind their wealth and credit
cards, but not their politics. “So what’s left in my wallet is my
driver’s license and my ACLU membership card,” he said.
Spurlock didn’t waste any time before he started the liberal
spin. “The state of affairs in Ohio mirrors conditions all over the
United States. Ohio has lost almost 250,000 jobs in the last four
years, alone.” Actually, the United States has had 25 straight
months of positive job creation, amounting to more than 3 million
new jobs.
The program showed the pair apartment hunting under the glare of
video lights. Naturally, the apartment they decided on was in a bad
neighborhood, but the owner was unrealistically open about it,
pointing out that “two days ago there was a street person living in
here” and “downstairs there was a crack house.” The couple
apparently never considered renting a room in a shared house in a
nicer area. That would have made less interesting television.
That meant it was time for the duo to find jobs. Rather than rely on
their education or skills, the two sought out “unskilled labor” they
could complain about. Spurlock went to a temp agency and Jamieson
took a job as a waitress/dishwasher.
Spurlock actually showed it was easy to find a job above minimum
wage and took a variety of temp jobs earning $7 an hour. Then when
his check for an 11-hour day showed $45.26 instead of $77, he never
bothered to point out how ruinous taxes can be. Instead, he
complained without making the connection. “So, I actually made less
than the minimum wage. That’s terrible.”
It didn’t take long before Jamieson showed that she understood
the reality of life on a budget more than Spurlock. She took to
walking to work to save $1.35 because “we can’t spare that.”
Jamieson explained “I haven't purchased anything and I have been
freakin’ walking to work every day.” The star never accepted that
reality, and proclaimed “I am so bad with money.” Apparently his
former partners agree. They’ve sued him for $40 million they say
they are owed from the movie profits.
Spurlock wasn’t ashamed to take charity out of the hands of those
genuinely in need. The couple turned to “a church-run store where
everything is totally free” to fill their apartment with furniture
and clothes. Spurlock said the group helped “tons of other families
and individuals who are struggling to get by.” The irony of a
wealthy Hollywood star taking charity away from others never dawned
on the couple.
Spurlock showed more about his financial ignorance by promoting a
Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) bill that would raise the minimum wage
and even quoted the liberal senator saying, “increasing the minimum
wage increases prosperity.”
The only attempt at balance in the whole program was a quick
response from a conservative economist labeled simply, “Tim Kane,
the Heritage Foundation.” Kane explained that raising the minimum
wage harms the economy. “Lower regulations, lower taxes, that’s what
creates job opportunities,” he said.
Spurlock left out that Kane is a Ph.D. economist and a
businessman who holds the Bradley Fellow in Labor Policy. According
to his bio on the Heritage Web site, he also founded multiple
software companies and one “was recognized as software startup of
the year for San Diego in 1999.”
Had Spurlock given him more time, he might have cited a study by
the Public Policy Institute of California that found raising the
minimum wage helps some earners and causes unemployment for others.
Or he could have added a study by The Survey Center at the
University of New Hampshire of 336 labor economists who said that
raising the minimum wage would cost jobs. Seventy-one percent of the
economists studied said an increase of 150-200 percent in the
minimum wage would cost jobs. Ninety-three percent of the economists
said a higher raise would cause job losses.
Spurlock ended his program with a rant about the minimum wage,
pointing out that “it’s been eight years” since the wage was
increased. He complained about the way things were for poor people,
claiming he had learned what life was like and that “I’m better for
being here.” Then he left and went back to Hollywood.
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