He should have gotten a Wii
The Agitator rips into John Edwards, a most excellent demolition. Now I see why Kerry chose Edwards as his running mate. My favorite part:
This passage from the AP story about Edwards’ misstep last week just blew me away:
Edwards, the Democrats’ vice presidential candidate in 2004, spoke Wednesday to supporters of union-backed WakeUpWalMart.com on a conference call launching the group’s holiday season campaign to pressure Wal-Mart for better labor standards.
In the call, he repeated a story about his son Jack disapproving of a classmate buying sneakers at Wal-Mart. “If a 6-year-old can figure it out, America can definitely figure this out,” Edwards said.
Um, no. What America can “figure out” is that Edwards is a sanctimonious prick, and that he’s training his son in his image. If some son of a swanky trial lawyer taunted my kid because his shoes were purchased at Wal-Mart, I’d give my son the okay to pop the kid in the mouth. I don’t know where Edwards’ son goes to school. Somehow, I doubt it’s a public school, where he might run into actual poor people. But Edwards’ might want to take note that not everyone can afford to clothe their kids in accordance with the prevailing elite liberal standards of the moment. Thing is, Edwards can, and still dispatched an aide to Wal-Mart for the PS3.
Finally, let’s assume that everything Edwards says is true — that he and his wife knew nothing about the aide going to Wal-Mart, and that they had nothing to do with the request that he be bumped to the front of the line. They still concede that a volunteer aide helps them with their Christmas shopping. Edwards’ whole “Two Americas” shtick is supposed to be about how elite, corporate, yacht-owning America preys on hard-workin’, blue-collar, son-of-a-millworker America. And though he’s a multimillionaire, we’re supposed to understand that he got his money the right way — by suing the exploiters, the capitalists, and the elitists, and by holding them accountable. He may be loaded, but in spirit, we’re supposed to know that he’s still part of purer, populist, exploited America.
So I wonder. How many working-class people have unpaid volunteers do their Christmas shopping for them?
I liked Edward’s comment that “If a 6-year-old can figure it out, America can definitely figure this out”. Wow, Senator, you think? Is the average American really as capable of understanding economics as a 6 year old? You flatter us.
Update: I just realized I had totally screwed up the use of blockquote tags resulting in some confusion about what I wrote versus what I quoted. My apologies.
Posted on November 19th, 2006 by pwyll
Filed under: politics
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I’m poor and Walmart is evil and everyone should boycott Walmart. Period.
Care to elaborate? Last I heard Walmart was not conscripting employees. Everyone who works or shops there does so voluntarily. What’s your objection?
Back at the psychiatric hospital I helped run, we had a status, unofficial of course, noting a patient as an “involuntary voluntary”. To wit, “either take your meds or I’ll make you an involuntary (i.e. commited) patient.”
People who shop at Walmart are economic involuntary voluntaries in “choosing” to shop there. The unethically manufactured low prices leave us no option. But I still won’t shop there.
My prime objection, amongst many, is that they are not an ethically run company. The details of their sins are common knowledge in the press.
Indeed, I had a fight with my mother due to one of their marketing lies recently.
Jeez, their hoodlums with labor unions only in mainland China,
It is interesting that you compare the people who shop at Walmart to patients in a psychiatric hospital. And like a psychiatrist, you know better than they what is in their best interest.
You should head on down to Walmart and explain that to the deluded customers who think they are doing the best thing for their families by trying to get things they need at a good price.
I try to explain it with the moral passion of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Passion is not a substitute for a coherent argument.
One more try, and only one argument, so I can hopefully avoid incoherence (Ouch!).
Walmart artificially creates low prices in their stores by an array of unethical and immoral business practices. Anyone who wants to shop there, fine. But they should get the facts on matter, thereby facing the tough choice between low prices and the moral high ground. Low prices in a capitalist economy only equal moral high ground if the god “money” rules, as in the U.S.