Plenty of Goofus and Gallant’s to hand out this week.
Food vs. Fat: The U.S. Department of Agriculture gets the Gallant for dusting off the food pyramid. Now 14 years old, it's getting a new look. In the meantime, Medicare goes Goofus on us by announcing it will cover the treatment of some obesity claims, resulting in billions in health care costs.
Why does Medicare get the Goofus for finally acknowledging obesity as an illness? It is a completely reactive measure that will not stop consumers, or the companies feeding them, from changing their habits. Not to mention, it puts more pressure on a troubled healthcare program.
Outsourcing vs. Reality TV: The next round of awards go to our friends in the media. Business 2.0 goes to great lengths to prove a point in its August issue. The Gallant-winning magazine outsourced part of the latest issue to India. “This cut the costs for the section in half and showed how journalism might stand up to the outsourcing trend.”
From inspired to tired, Reality TV gets this Goofus (if not the lifetime achievement Goofus). We’ve seen the programming ideas get steadily worse each season. Now the network executives are feuding over plagiarism.
Perhaps they should take B2.0’s lead and do a reality show on themselves. I doubt the tasteless and unoriginal genre would improve, but sweeps is just around the corner...
Atkins tore down that food pyramid!
Posted by: Robb Hecht | 07/25/2004 at 09:33 PM
Of course all of us looking to do is point fingers and lay blame, as usual, probably in hopes of getting a budget increase for some pet project that may or may not have anything to do with obesity, but if it does will be just as ineffectual as the other billions of dollars that people waste on weightloss efforts each year already.
Posted by: Andrew Spark | 02/11/2006 at 06:45 AM