Morgan Spur|ock is a tool

You might know Morgan Spur|ock. He's the guy that did the "documentary" "Supersize Me" and now has a show on FX called "3O Days." This guy grates on my nerves. Anyone that makes a living stating the obvious like it was a newly discovered fact earns nothing but my disdain.

"Supersize Me" is a brilliant piece of work that delivers the earth-shattering piece of news that eating every meal at McDonald's for a month is enormously unhealthy. Shocking. I was actually once engaged in an argument with people who thought the film was groundbreaking.

"It showed that a diet like that is as bad for your liver as binge drinking!" they proclaimed.

Wow, I'll keep that in mind the next time I think about having my next 90 meals at McDonald's. I'm pretty sure a month's worth of junk food is bad for most of your body...not just your liver. I'm amazed people need a movie to tell them this.

"3O Days" isn't much better. I've only seen three of them, but they've all been equally ridiculous.

First, in an attempt to show that gay people have feelings too, he sends this good-ol'-boy Midwestern military guy to San Francisco to live with a gay man for a month. The Midwestern guy was totally unprepared for the bombardment he was about to receive.

Essentially the only argument he had against homosexuality was that 'the Bible says it's wrong.' So, when he went to a church for gay people that was run by a lesbian, he was way out of his league. The church's (and I used the term loosely) argument was essentially that 'well, the Bible says a lot of things.' The priest (again, term used loosely) said that the Bible also condemns killing, and pointed out that membership in the military went against this teaching. Well, a person that has actually read a Bible would know that the Bible actually condemns murder, not killing, so the analogy is inaccurate. Of course, the Midwestern guy didn't think of this.

Interspersed throughout the show, Morgan talked to various people about homosexuality. Naturally, he found the most extreme examples he could. He found one "minister" who traveled around the country sporting signs like "God hates fags" and "AIDS cures fags." Brilliant.

He then found perfectly harmless gay couples walking down the street and asked them if they thought homosexuality was a sin. Shockingly, they said no. Fancy that.

Were there any people that could reasonably disagree with homosexuality? Of course not. Were there any examples of needlessly flamboyant homosexuals parading half-nude through Manhattan? Nope. Gotta love selective journalism.

Next up was 30 days living on minimum wage. Given my previous arguments on the matter, I found this episode particularly infuriating. I've already explained my thoughts on minimum wage, so I won't rehash that. What irritated me most about it was Morgan's little monologue at the end of the show about how hard it is to live on minimum wage. The irony is painful -- watching the host of a television show lament having to live on minimum wage for a month. He then promptly left and returned to his mansion, but not without first feigning compassion for those less fortunate.

For his next show, he found the most wasteful, spoiled, energy-devouring Americans he could and sent them to live on a self-sufficient commune to atone for their wasteful ways. This was absolutely ridiculous. Don't get me wrong, I'm all about a cleaner environment, but these people were insane. They literally crapped in buckets because they didn't want to flush perfectly good drinking water down a toilet.

Newsflash, hippies...water can be cleaned. We've had the same amount of water on this planet for the last few billion years -- it wasn't always drinking water. It was cleaned somewhere along the way. It's called a water treatment plant. Crapping in a bucket in the United States of America is utterly unnecessary. Stop doing it.

The show went on to say that there are other ways of producing energy rather than burning fossil fuels. A noble goal, count me in. Aside from solar, wind and hydrogen power, they mentioned using cow manure to produce methane and other biogases to produce energy. Decent enough idea, I guess...but it doesn't seem that anyone thought about the math involved.

One of the farmers pointed out that 100 cows could make enough manure in a day to replace the energy of one barrel of oil. That's it? 100 cows for one barrel? The United States uses 20 million barrels of oil every day. Why, that's only two trillion cows and we'll be weaned off of oil!

I'm not stupid. I'm all for alternative energy, but I'm not going to crap in a bucket, shower once a week and heat my home with cow manure for the sake of saving oil. I have ample faith that technology will take care of these problems. Once solar power becomes a prudent source of energy, we'll be set. Once biodiesel is cheaper than gasoline, people will be all for it. But until then, we don't need fake documentarians like Morgan Spurlock selectively disseminating information to push a political agenda. It’s inanely (not insanely, there’s a difference) irresponsible.

To blatantly rip of Stephen Co|bert -- Morgan Spur|ock is dead to me.