28 days for Zombies, 30 Days for being Poor

I watched 30 Days on FX last night. Morgan Spurlock, creator of the entertaining but ideologically flawed Super Size Me has a new series. He's applied the concept he used in SSM to other vaguely lefty ideas.

While I don't necessarily agree with his points, I find him very refreshing for a couple reasons. For one, he's funny. Unlike Micael Moore, he's actually an entertaining guy. Secondly (and more importantly) he argues in good faith. His documentary was a straightforward experiment and commentary on what fatasses we are. While he did lay much of the blame at McDonald's feet, (which is ultimately pretty juvenile) it was clear that he was also commenting on our excesses in general.

The first topic from his show dealt with living on minimum wage for thirty days. He and his wife locked up all their credit cards and cash and moved to Columbus, OH with $300 and got minimum wage jobs.
He did do an excellent job of showing how terribly difficult (and nearly impossible) it is to live on minimum wage. He also had a couple bouts of good (in this context) luck in that he was injured at work and his fiance fell ill during the thirty days. That gave them the opportunity to show what a hassle having no health insurance is as well.
And minimum wage does indeed suck. Thank Goodness it's really for kids.

Morgan got a job with a headhunter agency doing manual labor and his fiance washed dishes. They both made like 5.15 or so an hour. The problem here is that it doesn't take much ambition, intelligence, or anything at all to even accidentally develop skills.
Hanging drywall can be learned in a day. You can become proficient at it in about two weeks, and very skilled in only 6-8 months. It pays 10-15 dollars an hour to hang drywall depending on where you live.
Additionally, I did a tiny amount of research. It turns out that McDonald's, Taco Bell, Subway, Wendy's and several other top fast food joints offer health insurance for their full-time employees.

People supporting families aren't supposed to have minimum wage jobs.

While the show was an interesting exercise, I couldn't help but wonder why they were working so, well...stupid.

They took the bus because they said they couldn't afford a car. Neither can I, so that's why I had one financed. There are dealers out there (I made commercials for them) that will give ANYONE a car. You will get raped on the interest rate. But then you have a car.

Delivering pizzas? 10-20 dollars an hour.

Morgan is likeable enough fellow, and I hope his show does well. I do wonder why he would assume everyone else is too stupid to professionally duplicate what he's done in his own life. If you look at his IMDB, he was a production assistant on THE PROFESSIONAL in 1994. In 2004, he made his own movie, and now he's doing quite well.

Future episodes deal with being Muslim in America. Really? Who cares? Muslims over here are "Muslim light" at best. I assume he's going to show how people look at them funny, and there's some undercurrent of prejudice against them.
Fucking wah.
I'm fat, and there's an undercurrent of prejudice against me and a bunch of fat people didn't even have to wage a holy war on our entire way of life for that to happen.