The Exploitation of Charles Ramsey

Image source: WebProNews

May 23, 2013 - When is a hamburger a hero sandwich? When it's given free to Charles Ramsey, the burger lover and good Samaritan who rescued Amanda Berry and her daughter, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight from the house of Arial Castro in Cleveland on May 6.

When is a hero just a cheap way to get publicity for your restaurant? 

Ramsey ended their decade-long nightmare and became an instant hero, and a bunch of Ohio restaurants are shamelessly using Ramsey as the center piece to get virtually free public relations. The exploitation of Charles Ramsey is in full swing.

"I went to McDonald's," he told Fox News, "came home, I'm eating my McDonald's, I got the day off from work, so naturally you're doing nothing. And, I hear this girl screaming, and she's going nuts." As any real hero would do, he put down his food and ran outside to see what the trouble was. That's when he found Amanda Berry yelling for help from the inside of Castro's front door.

More than a dozen restaurants in the Cleveland area are now tripping over each other to give Ramsey free burgers for life. And, finally, McDonald's itself has promised free burgers to Ramsey, but only for a year.

And why not? They're getting a lot of free publicity. It will cost each of them nothing more than a few burgers a month at most.

I'm happy for Charles Ramsey that he's is getting free food for performing his civic duty. Thousands of other Americans perform heroic deeds every year. Some are professional first responders: Fire fighters, police officers, paramedics, and so on. Many are ordinary people who help neighbors and strangers in distress, from stopping to give first aid to accident victims to to running into a burning house to save people to intervening in a mugging. How many of those people -- even after being interviewed for TV -- get free food for life from local restaurants? (Answer: None.)

“We want to honor our local hero with local food,” said Scott Kuhn, who runs several of the restaurants giving Ramsey free burgers. Webpronews quoted Kuhn's explanation: “He stopped his meal midway through to help those women. We’re now making sure he has other opportunities to go out and fully enjoy his burger.” Yah, sure. Really?