JR Monsterfodder has a great, long-standing Wal-Mart diary going at dKos. Today he found a story at Wal-MartWatch that puts the lie to every claim to support diversity that the Enemy of the People has ever made. From the Salt Lake City Tribune: (emph mine)
Wal-Mart Inc., which bills itself as a champion for bringing low prices to blue-collar consumers, wants its proposed Utah bank to be free from a federal law that says banks must reinvest in the communities where they get their money.
Specifically, Wal-Mart Bank wants to be exempt from making at least some credit available to low income and minority communities, a requirement under the Community Reinvestment Act. And that, opponents say, is reason enough to deny Wal-Mart's Utah banking application.
That's actually reason enough never to shop at WalMart again. Tell your friends.
UPDATE: On the other side, it looks like Wal-Mart is seeing some drawbacks to the class and culture war that has made the company what it is today. It's old news that now that their traditional target shoppers are feeling the pinch of the kill-the-poor economy WalMart helped to create, the retail giant is scrambling to attract the more monied consumers who routinely choose Target for their discount shopping needs. WakeUpWalmart, for instance, has a story that the Enemy of the People will be advertising in Vogue this year. Vogue. But what's really interesting is this story from the from the pro-war WaPo reprinted in the Canton Repository, which gives a good look at what WalMart has to do and what it risks in its drive to get all Blue-State on us:
Head south on Fifth Avenue, past the look-but-don't-touch boutiques of Bruno Magli, Salvatore Ferragamo and Henri Bendel, stop at 31st Street and look for a building on the right, between the fast-food restaurant and the souvenir shop.
There, on the sixth floor, sits the only Wal-Mart in Manhattan--not a store, but offices, a laboratory even, where veterans from Nautica, OshKosh B'Gosh and the West Elm furniture catalogue work, largely in secret, to help the nation's largest retailer earn one designation that has long eluded it:
Hip.
...
The Trend Office itself is classic Wal-Mart, with penny-pinching touches like fake hardwood floors. The cubicles, tables and chairs are standard-issue from Bentonville. But, in a nod toward the office's fashion ambitions, workers asked to use wall paint a shade brighter than the grayish Wal-Mart white, and to splurge on a set of stools from Design Within Reach. Quotes from Sam Walton cover the walls.
``We try to live the culture of Wal-Mart, to an extent,'' said the head of the Trend Office, Lisa Waltuch, standing in front of a window, whose shade, in certain lights, reveals a photo of Sam Walton.
...
But as Wal-Mart steps out of its comfort zone, it runs the risk of walking right past its conservative shoppers. A risque line of T-shirts for the teen and 'tween set carries sexually suggestive messages such as ``My boyfriend is out of town,'' ``Meet me after school'' and the brief but provocative self-description ``Easy.''
The New York staff is also worried Wal-Mart will falter when it comes to displaying its trendy new merchandise, putting, say, a modern-looking horizontal striped plate next to one with a grandmotherly floral pattern.
Watts called Wal-Mart's uneven product presentation a ``real issue.'' The chain has quietly hired 350 ``style police''--the official title is fashion merchandiser--who travel from store to store teaching employees how to display trendy products.
WalMart wants to be exempt from the Community Reinvestment act so they can avoid investing in low-income and minority American communities, preferring instead to ship it's profits out of the country. It buys all its merchandise from China. It drives down the American wage base wherever it goes. It fights organized labor, the only force in this country that battles for real economic mobility and the preservation of the fragile middle class. Now WalMart is trying to play both sides of the culture war by marketing hip urban fashions to their customer base while happily allowing the culture war between blue (hip) and red (yet-to-be-hip) America to rage. Dividing the country along class and culture lines is good policy when WalMart gets the benefits of that strife from columnists and PR flaks who scream Class War! everytime WalMart's business practices are dragged into the light.
Remind me again exactly how WalMart is good for America.
Nice post, don't let the media lose focus of how Wal-Mart is facing the biggest gender class-action lawsuit in history. And this coming at a time when we celebrate the 85th anniversary of women's suffrage tommorrow.
Posted by: BK | August 25, 2005 at 01:18 PM