Wal-Mart is currently sponsoring NPR in our area. Definitely a strategic PR move on their part.
You can just hear the news announcers gritting their teeth when giving the little schpiel about how great a company they are.
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13 Responses to “Wal-Mart on NPR”
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Oh, dear me.
“Support for N-P-ARRR comes from the mumble-mumble-mumble-Mart Foundation - bringing your neighborhoods affordable necessities since 1995.”
[click]
“Are we off? Muther-[blankety-blank] sunuva-[beeeep]!!! What have we come to, PEOPLE?”
Cerise
Give Wal-Mart credit for conspicuous irony. Somebody at that store has a pretty good sense of humor, evidently.
Speaking of sense of humor, Robert, I can’t tell if you’re kidding or not [mine's pretty deficient, as you can tell].
I would think better of Wal-Mart if they were trying to be cute instead of earnestly going after some cred. with NPR listeners.
Cerise
Cerise - I can’t see Wal-Mart really feeling like they NEED cred with NPR listeners. What would it benefit them? So I’m sticking with the “Sense of humor” argument.
Well, you’ve certainly offered the most plausible explanation I’ve heard so far.
Cerise
In all candor, I don’t get it. Other than the “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas,” how is it that it has become so fashionable to despise WalMart?
That’s a provocative question, DJ. I don’t dislike Wal-Mart because it’s fashionable to do so. I truly don’t enjoy my shopping experience there and avoid it. True, there is a societal backlash, it seems, because Wal-Mart doesn’t appear to have the good of the community and their employees as a prominent part of their mission (show me a bloated business that does), but that may be a fashionable backlash or a reasonable one. I’m sure I don’t know. I just hate going to one.
And I’m not certain what you mean about the “Happy Holidays” vs. “Merry Christmas” controversy. People hate Wal Mart because they use one or the other? If they insist on “Happy Holidays”, they have my full support. In that respect, at least.
Cerise
I actually kind of like Wal-Mart, because they’re good for poor people.
WTF?, you say? Well, consider the perspective of a poor person:
a. They will give you a job even if you can’t read (which for some people is a godsend)
b. They sell stuff you can afford (which is a godsend for all poor people - ever try to clothe a family on a shoestring at the mall?)
If you can afford to support stores that pay better wages and have more labor-friendly practices, good on ya. But Wal-Mart serves a crucial role in America for those who cannot afford such noble consumerism.
I tend to hate shopping in big box stores in general, so I take my iPod with me. Wal-Mart doesn’t stand out as particularly bad; in fact, I like the diversity you see there. Go to the Wal-Mart in Renton, and you see people of every people, tribe, language, and income level, brought together by the fact that they can feed and clothe their families despite the horribly high cost of living on the west coast.
Costco is full of pissy, overweight, monster-SUV-driving white people who are annoyed that egg nog doesn’t come in 64-packs of individually wrapped syringes, and so forth. (but of course, so is Sam’s - and yes, I prefer Costco to Sam’s Club - call it critique from within :)).
DJGrey:
I can only speak for myself, but “it’s fashionable” isn’t the reason I’m avoiding Wal-Mart like the plague. I live in a community that’s pretty much impoverished to begin with, and since Wal-Mart moved in, they’ve basically killed most of the local commerce. Economics is, of course, much more complicated than this, but the short version of the implications of this is that now Wal-Mart is just about the only shopping option left, and when you shop there, the money you spend goes out of the community - poof - whereas shopping at a locally owned producer or vendor sees a much higher percentage of the funds staying in the community. Wal-Mart is contributing in a HUGE way to the economic leeching of our region, and to our continued descent into even deeper poverty, not to mention to our “brain drain,” since anyone with a clever business idea has to leave upstate to implement it…
Does Wal-Mart employ a bunch of people? Yes. But Wal-Mart limits other employment options by destroying other businesses, and it also guarantees that local people only have the option of “employee” and never “proprietor.”
So yeah, I don’t shop at Wal-Mart unless absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, as more and more shops fold, it’s becoming the only available option for certain items.
Sigh.
Lindsay-
Good points, all of them. Local businesses certainly suffer the most from Wal-Mart’s presence.
It seems like most communities want Wal-Mart to move in on the whole, though, because people like the convenience and pricing. I guess, having lived in Arkansas, where all the money is gointg to, I didn’t have much of a feel for the economic drain factor.
I guess I just think it’s funny when people like capitalism, but not if someone is really, really good at it (i.e. cutthroat) like Wal-Mart is.
Thanks - as far as people feeling that the benefits of Wal-Mart outweigh the downside, I think that people aren’t particularly good in general at considering consquences, especially when they’re collective consequences as opposed to indvidual consequences. It’s easy to toss a bit of trash out the window and assume that nothing bad will come of it, but if everyone did so, the highway’d be a mess. I know that by not shopping at Wal-Mart I’m not giving the company a black eye, but I don’t want to contribute, even in a tiny way, to the problem.
Unbridled free market capitalism can be a tremendous source of suffering, imo. Capitalism has any number of good applications (especially as a motivator for technological development), but I don’t think you’ll find any economic or political system that actually works in its purest form, and capitalism is no exception to that. Industry regulation is required for the public good. Economic systems ought to exist to serve the community, not vice versa.
Wow, again, very well said.
We see precisely this dynamic working in the low-income area in which we live. Litter is everywhere. For the individual of a certain mindset, it makes more sense to throw trash out the window than to leave it in one’s car, since having a presentable vehicle is a significant status symbol (and if the trash is an alcoholic beverage container, you can get arrested for having it in your car). So we end up with a lot of trash on our street.
I think the trick, for society, is making it in the best interests of most people to do the best thing. There will always be people for whom it’s grossly impractical to do the ideal thing - it’s not worth it to shop at the mall instead of Wal-Mart if it means two of your kids don’t get the clothes they need. But everyone else needs to take up the slack, I guess.