Why Does WalMart Hate America?

A columnist for the Pensacola News Journal wrote a column exploring the public costs of low, low prices.  Deciding that the "negativity" disturbs their wa, WalMart has kicked the paper out of area stores in Florida to establish an information-free zone: (emph mine)

Mark's column really wasn't about Mr. Walton's store, but about Pensacola and how we're becoming a Wal-Mart kind of town, "cheap and comfy on the surface, lots of unhappiness and hidden costs underneath."

That was the point Mark was trying to make.

Bob Hart, one of the upper managers for the Wal-Marts in the area, called me and said he didn't like Mark's column, didn't like a lot of Mark's columns.

I told Mr. Hart that I don't particularly like some of Mark's columns either. Like the one he wrote about charter government, which Escambia County had put on the ballot for voters to consider last year. Mark said the charter-government proposal was a mess and that people would be fools to vote for it.

Mark speaks his mind

I plain didn't like that column, especially since the week before I had written something that said charter government was the best idea since sliced bread. I am Mark's boss, you know. He ought to have given me a little more respect than that.

But Mark speaks his mind. And the truth be told, that's what he gets paid to do, even though it kind of hurt me when nearly 70 percent of the voters sided with Mark and rejected charter government.

Mr. Hart, however, said he and his stores couldn't tolerate a newspaper that would print the opinions of someone who was as mean and negative as Mark O'Brien. But, you know, Mark's not nearly as ornery as that left-wing rabble-rouser Molly Ivins, whose column the newspaper also publishes. At any rate, Mr. Hart said he wanted the newspaper to get its racks off his lots. But he also said that if I fired Mark, we could talk about continuing to sell the newspaper at his stores.

Wal-Mart is a company that wraps itself in red, white and blue.

I might understand it if Wal-Mart said I ought to fire Mark because what he said wasn't accurate. But that isn't the case. Mark accurately reported that there are 10,000 children of Wal-Mart employees in a health-care program that is costing Georgia taxpayers nearly $10 million a year.

Shouldn't we talk about that?

When we stop listening to people on the other side of the fence, when we try to silence and even punish people for thinking differently than we do and raising facts and figures we don't like, well, we won't be red, white and blue anymore.

That's why Mark still has a job and you can't buy a Pensacola News Journal at Wal-Mart anymore.

UPDATE:  Twitching from the bad press, WalMart sent a spokesperson to say that the News Journal would be allowed back in stores.  No word on whether that offer required anyone at the paper to be fired. 

 

Comments

[Thomas Nephew]

Kinda stupid, kinda bullying: Mayberry Macchiavellism. But it does makes me wonder how often it's actually worked (ie, journalist fired to keep the paper in the store).

[Thomas Nephew]

Kinda stupid, kinda bullying: Mayberry Macchiavellism. But it does make me wonder how often it's actually worked (ie, journalist fired to keep the paper in the store).

[Thomas Nephew]

(thought I'd caught that 'makes' typo. Oh well.)