I went to one this morning. Every time I go, I’m in awe. This time, I went to get some picture frames for a few photos I want to put on my wall. Wal-Mart had fine 8×10 frames for $2 each. And 10×13 frames for $5. I saw a 28-inch flat-screen TV for $199. Microwaves for $29.

It sure is thoughtful of lefty activists to work so hard to keep Wal-Mart out of urban areas. We can’t have this corporate behemoth exploiting low-income folks with jobs that wouldn’t otherwise exist, and by selling them good stuff at low prices.

The horror.

Better people who are well-employed decide for the urban poor that they don’t need those jobs. And that they should be shopping at more tasteful stores, anyway.

I think that maybe — just maybe — anti-Wal Mart sentiment has more to do with an aversion to the white, rural ethnology the store sometimes represents than its labor practices. We can’t have our Ethiopian restuarants and esoteric bookstores blighted by NASCAR culture.

But that’s just a hunch.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 18th, 2005 at 11:47 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.