A row between the fast food giant Burger King and one of its major franchise owners has erupted over roadside signs proclaiming “global warming is baloney“.
The franchisee, a Memphis-based company called the Mirabile Investment Corporation (MIC) that owns more than 40 Burger Kings across Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi, has described Burger King as acting “kinda like cockroaches” over the controversy. MIC says it does not believe Burger King has the authority to make it take the signs down.
The dispute began to sizzle last week, when a local newspaper reporter in Memphis, Tennessee, noticed the signs outside two restaurants in the city and contacted the corporation to establish if the message represented its official viewpoint. Burger King’s headquarters in Miami said it did not, adding that it had ordered MIC to take the signs down.
But a few days later readers of the Memphis paper said they had seen about a dozen Burger King restaurants across the state displaying the signs and that some had yet to be taken down. Media attempts to contact MIC to establish why it was taking an apparently defiant stance were rebuffed, but the Guardian managed to grill MIC’s marketing president, John McNelis.
“I would think [Burger King] would run from any form of controversy kinda like cockroaches when the lights get turned on,” said Mr McNelis. “I’m not aware of any direction that they gave the franchisee and I don’t think they have the authority to do it.”
McNelis added: “The [restaurant] management team can put the message up there if they want to. It is private property and here in the US we do have some rights. Notwithstanding a franchise agreement, I could load a Brinks vehicle with [rights] I’ve got so many of them. By the time the Burger King lawyers work out how to make that stick we’d be in the year 2020.”
Does Burger King still tout “flame broiled over an open grill”?
Every Burger King has what is effectively a barbecue pit. I’m sure that puts out it’s share of carbon.
I have to question the sanity of the Management company for wanting to get into political billboarding. What do they have to gain by such actions?
the Tiki
#2, they’re in red states. If you temporarily knock about 60 points off the IQ it all makes perfect sense.
(gratuitous generalizing, but a sliver of truth nonetheless)
I think it’s the Klingons…
#2, Free advertising. Don’t knock off 60 IQ points, ADD 60!
This is probably going to go all over the web, just like it has here.
The truth still gets published once in a while.
Just like if you owe your bank a billion dollars, having 40 franchise stores gives you power over the company.
if i ate fast food, they’d get my business.
nice to see someone has risen above their brainwashing…
-s
GLobal warming isn’t baloney. It’s real and is caused by the increase in US stamp prices.
(Click photo to enlarge.)
Thank you franchise owners. Time to step up and say it like it is. “Baloney” should read “BULLSHIT”, however. I need not get into the specifics, but I have a degree in paleogeology and
am well informed about earth’s climate cycles. Time to wake up, Liberal Amerika.
I live in Memphis, what you have to realize that this is Memphis the land of Elvis, I swear that on a daily basis they drop a stupid bomb here.
So the manager was telling his boss that “no one ever reads the message board” after he tried to explain that he couldn’t sell any apple pies from the special posted last week. So – he said “I’ll prove it to you”
Now THAT would be funny.
Wow, I’ll bet if they put up “Religion is baloney” (which would actually be true), they’d get in major trouble.
OK, let’s assume the guy is right. The question still remains, why is he so passionate about it that he feels like he has to put it on the sign of all his restaurants. His right to do it or not, seems like kind of a jerk thing to do.
mmmm baloney!
So the company is OK with advertising the creepy “new” version of the burger King but not this.
jccalhoun, the people pushing global warming would hurt this guy’s business. Restricting meat is part of the agenda to combat global warming.
I’ve never been able to post a picture before. Did the editors intervene and put that graph in?
[Yes – ed.]
MikeN, I assume it was an editor. the graph wasn’t there when I posted earlier
MikeN.
That is the MOST AWESOME graph!
(I knew it had to be the Government’s fault!)
#9 Well, it is more closely aligned than CO2.
Global warming is indisputable. But then again… they probably believe in an indivisible being as well.
Jagermeister, a basic problem with that chart is that the temperature measurement stations are flawed, and much of the warming comes from urban heat island effect. When they put in new sensors to measure ocean temperature, we have not seen the heat uptake associated with global warming models, and if that lack of ocean warming continues, it would falsify the current global warming models.
http://surfacestations.org
Here’s an article on ocean heat.
http://tinyurl.com/oceanheat
#21, Jagermeister, An indivisible being — is that like a prime number being?
#22 – MikeN
Nice source for your second link:
Real climatologist.
#23 – BubbaRay
LOL – Oops… a typo. 😀
From the article:
William DiPuccio was a weather forecaster for the U.S. Navy, and a Meteorological/Radiosonde Technician for the National Weather Service. More recently, he served as head of the science department for St. Nicholas Orthodox School in Akron, Ohio (closed in 2006). He continues to write science curriculum, publish articles, and conduct science camps.
I have no idea what other things he does.
MikeN, your single sample of a (questionable) scientist must truly know more than all the other reputable ones who say that global warming is real.
@Skippy
If they put a sign like that in Tennessee, the BK would be set on fire within an hour.
I really don’t get people that knock on religion, wasn’t “global warming” a religion because if you debated the facts they’d label you a “climate change denier” as if you insulted their religious beliefs.
I’m convinced everyone believes something and despite being an atheist I have to say some atheists are at least as annoying and as bigoted as the bible thumper guys who cry when they got busted with a prostitute and try to roll back science to medieval times.
Global warming isn’t baloney, but it is irrelevant. Towards the end of 2012 the suns gonna blast us with an intense coronal mass ejection. The destruction of technological infrastructures will be much more devestating to our highly specialized society than global warming, at least in the short term.
#28 – Hmeyers – I’m convinced everyone believes something and despite being an atheist.
Very true. Atheists believe in things that make can be proven over time.