Super Size Conspiracy - Las Vegas Mercury Gets Kooky

By ACSH Staff — May 28, 2004
An "alternative" paper in Las Vegas has gone into full-on tinfoil hat mode about the Morgan Spurlock documentary "Super Size Me." They claim - third hand, of course - that this guy who has this friend who knows this dude tells him that a nefarious group known as The Firm was contracted by another firm to undermine the movie.

An "alternative" paper in Las Vegas has gone into full-on tinfoil hat mode about the Morgan Spurlock documentary "Super Size Me."

They claim - third hand, of course - that this guy who has this friend who knows this dude tells him that a nefarious group known as The Firm was contracted by another firm to undermine the movie.

Here is where they go into UFO mode: "That someone wasn't the Vegas-based flackery, which, says a staffer, was subcontracted by another PR company, but that firm's client, the grandly named American Council on Science and Health. This conservative pressure group, generously funded by a bevy of food, drug and chemical companies, has been involved in spin control for years--most notably during the Alar scare, when ACSH retaliated against those memorable public service ads featuring Meryl Streep, insisting that the proven carcinogen, sprayed on trees by apple growers, was perfectly safe."

Alar was a giant hoax perpetuated on the American public and "60 Minutes" by Natural Resources Defense Council and their PR firm, Fenton Communications. Good Morning America and 20/20 investigate reporter John Stossel says that incident is what made him skeptical about the machinations of environmental activists.

It was never a "proven carcinogen", the Surgeon General of the United States thanked us for exposing it as complete nonsense.