Every dollar you spend at Wal-Mart goes to support the American Taliban. Please, I beg you, go down the freeway to the next off-ramp and shop at Kmart or Target, or better yet, go into a downtown (if Wal-Mart's predatory practices haven't killed it yet) and see what's there.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2085183/Redbook magazine, you might assume, is the Laura Bush of glossies—maternal, remedial, smugly unstylish. Along with Ladies' Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, McCall's, Family Circle, Woman's Day, and Better Homes and Gardens, it is one of the so-called "Seven Sisters" of service-magazine journalism—think of them as a regular bridge group—who, in gentle conspiratorial whispers and energetic soccer-practice tones, instruct American women in the lost art of domesticity. And so it came as a surprise when Wal-Mart announced in early June that it would install prophylactic "U-shaped blinders" to obscure the suggestive cover text of four women's magazines—and Redbook was among them....Bizarre, you say? Turns out there's an agenda behinda all this. Read on...
The superficial sauciness of the latter-day Redbook notwithstanding, Wal-Mart's decision to chasten the magazine seems bizarre, but the chain's demonstrated desire to please Christian groups sheds some light. A month before cracking down on the women's magazines, the $244-billion-dollar-a-year chain—which is responsible for 15 percent of all magazines' single-copy sales—banned Maxim, Stuff, and FHM. The purported reason was "customer complaints," but the announcement came simultaneously with Wal-Mart's nomination to the Christian Merchants program run by Kingdom Ventures, a development organization that has established a private-label direct mail catalog and plans to launch free Web sites for every Christian church in the country. The Christian Merchants will be allowed to sell their wares through the Kingdom Catalog and through iExalt.com, the portal of the faithful. This means an open line to the hundreds of millions of church-going consumers, who spend hundreds of billions of dollars every year. "Our Christian Merchants initiative aims at providing approved companies with easy access to millions of Christians," Gene Jackson, the president of Kingdom Ventures told Business Wire. "Personally, I would feel much better buying clothes, gas, or computers, knowing that they help increase the church's positive influence in our country. In fact, the items purchased could remind us of our relationship with God," he said. He denies that Kingdom Ventures exerted any pressure on Wal-Mart to clean up its aisles.Do not give them easy access to tens of thousands of DUers! Just say NO to any company that lets these religio-fascists dictate its policy!
And finally, a point to ponder:
...Whatever the reason for the censorship, the loss of the men's magazines and the diminished desirability of the women's titles makes room for a new women's glossy that Wal-Mart has just helped launch: American, a lifestyle magazine with a patriotic thrust. If American reflects the principles Wal-Mart has lately espoused—prescriptive religion, sexism, corporate strong-arming to prevent unionization—it is bound to be dirtier than Redbook.Right ON, Dana Goodyear! You GO!
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
