UPDATE: Morgan Spurlock Inspires Students To Eat Right, Make Fun Of The Disabled
Morgan Spurlock, the amiable everyman documentary filmmaker who nearly died for our McNugget-craving sins in his anti-McDonald's cautionary tale, Super Size Me, has found himself once again the object of controversy, this time for a lecture he gave to a group of 700 suburban Philadelphia high school students:
Speaking at Hatboro-Horsham High School's first-ever health fair, Morgan Spurlock joked about the intelligence of McDonald's employees, about "retarded kids in the back wearing helmets" and teachers smoking pot in the balcony.
The special education students in the back row were led by teachers out of the hourlong presentation.
"If you put the whole package together, the use of the F-word and poking fun at teachers and the comments about special-needs students, it just wasn't appropriate," Superintendent William Lessa said. [...]
Spurlock said he's never had a complaint after giving similar talks at other high schools and colleges. He said he had been told shortly before his appearance not to talk about McDonald's because a board member of the Hatboro-Horsham Education Foundation, which sponsored the appearance, owns a franchise.
It seems ridiculous that a school would bring in Spurlock to address their students, then censor him moments before his presentation on the very subject that made him famous. As far as what some are calling his "insensitive" wisecracks, while he's on the defensive now, we imagine a public apology on that matter is forthcoming. May we suggest Spurlock devote 30 Days in the shoes of others, as his FX documentary show's gimmick dictates, and return to Hatboro-Horsham to make amends by splitting his month between attending their special-needs class in a hockey helmet and smoking out the faculty lounge.
UPDATE: Spurlock offers a detailed explanation and apology on his blog. More after the jump.
UPDATE: A reader directs us to the most recent entry in Spurlock's blog, in which he attempts to defend himself and his comments, and apologizes for some of his harsh language. Most notable is his clarification of the "retarded kids in the back wearing helmets" comment, which he claims was misquoted and taken out of context:
First and most importantly, it should be made clear that the only person I called “retarded” was myself when I was unable to hear a question from the audience. Having done work with special needs children in the past, something this hurtful would never come from my lips. I did make an aside about kids sleeping in the back wearing helmets, which was done with no malicious intent (I was playing it as a slacker reference to the Jon Heder character in the upcoming film “Benchwarmers,” a reference which was lost and, as I was later told, there were no actual students wearing helmets in the back).
Sadly, by quoting a movie that hasn't even been released yet, Spurlock overshot the mark with his attempt at being on the cutting-edge of his audience's cultural reference radar. Had he only likened the delinquents at the rear of the auditorium to something in a current teen-friendly release, maybe the cross-dressing heroine of She's The Man, perhaps the entire misunderstanding could have been avoided.
