This guy named Daniel Christopherson called me a few weeks ago. He's a private music teacher over in Redmond. Anyway, one day after a lesson, one of Daniel's students, a particular bright and energetic nine-year-old, busts out this crazy dance routine. Christopherson's jaw drops. The kid starts singing something like, "Oh Taco Bell Taco Bell you're so swell I love me some tacos it- makes me want to yell!" The whole time the kid's singing, he's jumping up and down and doing these little hand motions and dance steps to a Taco Bell jingle. "Um, where did you learn that?" asks the mortified Christopherson. "In school," says the kid.
The Taco Bell kid attends Redmond's Einstein Elementary.
"It's not like a mind-control program or anything," says Einstein Principal Paul Luczak. "Our music teacher here, Mrs. Seong, was simply teaching the kids a melody from something they all know on TV," he says. "It was a Taco Bell melody, I think, but they changed the words." Wait, wait, wait--Mrs. Seong? (A music teacher named Mrs. Seong? Obviously a plant.) Christopherson disputes the principal's claim that the words were changed. "He was clearly singing about bean burritos," Christopherson says.
Mrs. Seong (if that's her real name!) called me and admitted to teaching corporate junk-food jingles to her kids. "It's supposed to be fun! Anything to get them to learn!" Seong says defensively. Before I could ask her whether she works or has ever worked for Taco Bell, she hung up. So I called Taco Bell to get some answers.
Phone call to Taco Bell HQ, Irvine, CA, 10:09 a.m.:
Have you ever employed undercover agents, particularly one "Mrs. Seong," to promote Taco Bell products in our nation's schools?
"Not since I've been here. But we do use 'mystery shoppers' who pose as customers and then report back to us," says Taco Bell spokesperson Carol Anawati.
Have you ever bribed a schoolteacher with value meal coupons?
"Pardon me?"
It's so obvious what's going on over there.
