Mum and Dad don't live together, but they love little Ben very much. Mum helps Ben get ready to meet Dad one nice, bright morning. Ben tells Mum Dad is taking him to the zoo - so Mum goes one better by inviting Ben to McDonald's. So begins the burger chain's latest "pester power" ad, writes Medb Ruane
Dad sits in his car, Mum and Ben stand outside in the street. "I need him back by two," she orders. Dad drives Ben off and hears him say he needs to get back 'cos Mum is taking him to the zoo - so Dad goes one better by inviting Ben to McDonald's too.
Pesky kid! This idiot's guide to shared parenting, child development and pester power is the latest McDonald's ad, now showing on a television near you.
Silly Mum, silly Dad too, but silliest of all the company with so damaging a commitment to family values.
Within hours, Ben will widen the rupture between his competitive parents, enhance his chances of getting diabetes, heart disease or cancer later on and affirm McDonalds' stereotype of what gives a kid true grit. Bless his heart, they hope he's one of millions.
Families ain't what they used to be - never were, in fact - so when the McDonald's slice- of-life advertising series moves in on single parent families under stress and with who-knows-what custody arrangements, we're seeing a company that thinks it's in touch with contemporary life.
How the smart executives who approved the ad must have smiled with delight at the prospect of growing the market of separated fathers forced to squeeze their primary relationship into the time it takes to eat a happy meal.
How reassured those fathers and their children will be at seeing their way and place of relating affirmed on prime time television.
And what a gift to separated mothers to know that in their heart of hearts, other women want to outdo their children's fathers with the same one-upmanship.
Go on, play power games through the child, everyone else does: it's not your fault, it's kids these days - everyone knows how devious and manipulative they are.
S UCH invasion of cultural space warrants police protection at G8 summits, but who will police this profound invasion of family space?
Under the bright colours and fun packaging, the contempt of McDonald's for families, especially children, has never been more visible.
Not content with identifying children as a market so unconscious of quality they will eat cheap food and get parents to pay for the privilege, the company now promotes a vision of children and family with the kind of attributes that come from hell.
Scheming, cunning and underhand, the child must treat his parents as a market to be exploited as ruthlessly as the ad exploits him. Parents are weak, unable to set limits and desperate to win approval, so smart kids should set limits 'cos their parents can't.
Family values are asserted at every opportunity in the company's many mission statements.
But of course! McDonald's' restaurants are, they claim, "by their nature, sociable places, intrinsically linked to community life".
Any reasonable interpretation would mean we're not talking fast food here, we're talking love and loyalty and all the qualities that help a family put children first, especially when it's tough.
Grandma's apple pie is a long way off. This ad's twist is to set those values, not reflect them, to promote perceptions that have nothing to do with family, in whatever shape its values come.
Every weakness, every vulnerability, every base instinct is reinforced in a cynical narrative that turns value on its head.
Family is not a safe or loving place, it's an opportunity for guile where each member smiles on the surface while operating with the skills you'd need to claw your way up the ranks of a multinational ad agency, or maybe the corporate ladder of McDonald's itself.
Humans developed taste to protect themselves from being poisoned, researchers say. At school in Ireland, Ben's taste choices will be confirmed by the company's latest corporate links with the FIFA World Cup and the new Primary School Teacher Award.
This is awful stuff.
Showing your love for your child by giving him an unlimited diet of burgers and chips is showing him how to live as a sucker.
The more he consumes low-fibre, high-additive and sodium compounds, the more time he may have to spend in and out of doctors' surgeries. Unhealthy food with sweetener? This is hardly wholesome.