With his recent ‘Best Documentary’ nomination for this year’s Academy Awards, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock may have made film history: with his documentary “Supersize Me,” he managed to drive all of the journalists in America and the American public crazy.

Since the release and mostly positive public response to the film, there has been a media frenzy that Michael Moore would kill for. After all, Moore was making documentaries and getting fat before it was cool. I have read through dozens of articles — and I’m not talking about movie reviews, here, I mean actual news items.

Most of these articles are just overreactive responses to the film, such as numerous articles with titles like “Don’t Supersize Me” (I bet that title took weeks to work out) that talk about the health benefits of eating a reasonably-sized salad as a meal.

My question is, “What is wrong with everybody?”

The most obvious problem with the media’s championing of “Supersize Me” is that they are interpreting it as a shrill denunciation of McDonald’s. And granted, the film certainly doesn’t make McDonald’s look like the Gandhi of the food service industry, but then again, Gandhi could have benefited from a Big Mac or two.

The point is, “Supersize Me” isn’t about how healthy or unhealthy McDonald’s is, it’s about how unhealthy Americans are. The news media has done a fantastic job of ignoring this fact, using a tried and true technique that we in the business call the “Putting Your Fingers in Your Ears and Going ‘La La La La'” Technique. It’s the same technique that the Republican Party used when confronted with the fact that Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11 — but that’s another column entirely.

I’ve come across newspaper and magazine articles trying to make capitalize off of “Supersize Me” by trying to get some duly sinister quotes out of McDonald’s PR staff and legal representatives. The movie is not meant to attack McDonald’s. It’s meant to attack Americans whose idea of a balanced diet is getting peanut M’Ms in their McFlurry.

Spurlock’s results wouldn’t have been any different if he had eaten three meals a day at Burger King instead of McDonald’s (and for every e-mail I get about how Burger King is healthier than McDonald’s, I will personally kill a whole basket of needlessly cute puppies, and trust me, you don’t want that on your conscience).

But even more than any of that, why has this movie created such uproar? What is it telling us that we didn’t already know?

Are there honestly people who believe that all that grease on their burger is some kind of magical artery lubricant that helps their blood pump more efficiently? I don’t know about you, but I was brought up with the impression that on the list of things that were good for me, fruits and vegetables were near the top, whereas fast food was only a couple steps above chewing on carpet tacks and drinking things found under the sink.

When I heard that Morgan Spurlock was going to eat nothing but McDonald’s for 30 days, I didn’t think, “Oh, what a wonderful scientific experiment that will surely benefit nutritionists worldwide!” I thought of it much the same way I think of the stunts pulled on Jackass: stupid, blatantly dangerous, and mildly entertaining.

Fast food is bad for you. Fast food has always been bad for you. Fast food companies have always advertised their products as being tasty and inexpensive. They never tried to pretend this stuff can provide the nourishment you need to run a marathon.

Find me one ad where they have a doctor giving a testimonial about the phenomenal nutritional value of the Big Mac, and I’ll find you a better medication.

America is supposed to be the leader of the free world. The least we could do is not embarass ourselves by trying to argue that a trip to McDonald’s is the keystone of a healthy diet.

We need to stop treating Morgan Spurlock like he’s anything more than a talented filmmaker, who made a huge amount of money by taping himself doing something we would otherwise consider incredibly stupid.

The irony of it all is, however, that he’s become what McDonald’s itself is — another modern American cultural icon.

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