CHICAGO — McDonald’s announced Monday that it had pulled a national advertising campaign featuring the ‘Cornell 7,’ acknowledging that the company should have conducted more extensive background checks before casting “the most demographically well-rounded group of alleged rapists we have ever seen.”
“Seven young college guys, different backgrounds, everybody smiling,” said McDonald’s marketing director Claire Hoffman. “Put some Big Macs in their hands, and you’ve got a commercial.”
According to the campaign’s creative director, who begged not to be named while desperately showing us photos of his children, the Chi Phi fraternity members simply walked into the restaurant where they were shooting.
“Usually you have to assemble this kind of diversity.” Hoffman shook her head. “They even had an ethnically ambiguous guy with an afro. Do you know how hard those are to find? We didn’t even have to direct him to laugh at everything like he’s having a good time.”
The Cornell 7 reportedly became the centerpiece of McDonald’s upcoming campaign aimed at younger consumers, “Your Next Good Time Is Waiting In The Group Chat.”
“In retrospect, pretty much every word in that campaign is a problem,” Hoffman said. “But I mean, what are the odds?”
When informed that roughly one in four women report experiencing completed or attempted rape and more than half report some form of contact sexual violence in their lifetimes, Hoffman blinked several times.
“Holy fuck. Those are the odds?!”
At a press briefing, McDonald’s CEO Daniel Whitman addressed the controversy.
“We take full accountability for the unfortunate casting of seven alleged rape monsters and have fully reflected on the matter in an essay published on our corporate website.”
When reporters reacted with stunned silence, Whitman appeared confused.
“It’s a very long essay. Like six pages. And we promise that we learned our lesson and won’t ever do it again.”
A company PR rep leaned over and whispered into his ear.
Whitman went pale and moaned, “They got to write goddamn essays!? What is wrong with this country?”
McDonald’s is not alone in struggling to process the extremely diverse-looking group.
The “Not All Men” movement is reportedly furious that the Cornell 7 looks like a representative sample of all men aged 18 to 24, severely undermining their effort to remind women that technically some guys are probably mostly fine.
“We’ve spent years explaining that sexual violence is confined to a very specific kind of man in a very specific brand of polo shirt, and then these assholes come along looking like the cast of a Netflix show,” said spokesman David Reilly. “Would it have killed them to all be blond lacrosse players named Tucker?”
Meanwhile, conservative media quickly found a silver lining in the allegations after realizing they could somehow make the whole thing about DEI.
“Seven fraternity brothers allegedly participated in an hours-long sexual assault, and somehow we’re supposed to believe it was just a coincidence that they weren’t all white?“ said Fox News host and man who looks like he has offhand knowledge of the correct dosage of clonazolam, Jesse Watters.
He went on to condemn liberal universities for “prioritizing diversity over merit,” before clarifying that he was referring exclusively to rapists.
“Welcome to Cornell!” Watters shouted. “Where countless qualified white rapists are passed over to meet some arbitrary racial quota.”
At press time, McDonald’s announced it would also be recasting Ronald McDonald after someone finally Googled the name of the current performer, Brock Turner.
