Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images.

In a random op-ed in the Washington Post today, James Franco comes to the unlikely defense of McDonald’s. The company—plagued by the unhealthiness of its food, increasingly loud calls for a living wage and better working conditions, and slumping sales— is trying to turn things around, and Franco wants you to know that he wants them to succeed.

The essay’s mix of unconnected personal anecdotes don’t ever add up to much of a defense of McDonad’s, though, beyond the fact that they employed Franco when his parents cut him off at age 18.

“All I know is that when I needed McDonald’s, McDonald’s was there for me. When no one else was,” Franco wrote. And boy was it a crazy ride that he was “definitely not too good” for:

Everyone ate from the fry hopper! He got hit on by the hamburger cooker—via a translator! A homeless woman and her son sometimes stopped by! He got to practice doing accents on customers! He stopped being a vegetarian to eat the cheeseburgers! He put a LOT of salt on the fries! Then he did a “very elaborate” Super Bowl commercial and his fast food career was all over!

Franco, who was treated “fairly well” at McDonald’s, almost completely glosses over the
growing fight to increase the minimum wage and improve conditions for some of the country’s most vulnerable workers (there is a brief mention at the beginning that the company’s newly raised minimum wage only applies to employees of corporate-owned outlets, and that McDonald’s is looking to sell some of those off).

And amid the stories and clueless cheerleading about how great it was to work at Mickey D’s for a grand total of three months, he betrays the real reason why the company is in trouble.

“I still love the simplicity of the McDonald’s hamburger and its salty fries. After reading “Fast Food Nation,” it’s hard for me to trust the grade of the meat. But maybe once a year, while on a road trip or out in the middle of nowhere for a movie, I’ll stop by a McDonald’s and get a simple cheeseburger: light, and airy, and satisfying.”

Of course, that is all one needs to know about the state of McDonald’s sales these days. Many people realized what they were putting in their bodies when they stopped in for a Big Mac, and started cutting back. Even Franco’s apparent nostalgia for the days of eating stolen frozen apple bars in the freezer hasn’t led him to go back more than once a year.