crossposted at Daily Kos

My friends at Wake-Up Wal-Mart and I have seen something remarkable:

In what we might presume to be the most bone-headed, most egregious iteration yet of the right-wing media's effort to convince <del>us all</del> itself that Wal-Mart = America, and that those who fault the company are in fact terrist sympathizers who no doubt also hate baseball and apple pie, this weekend the New York Post provided us with a nearly three thousand-word manifesto on Wal-Mart's unassailable decency, penned by intrepid regurgitator Charles Platt.

Memeorandum featured it, some right-wing blogs slobbered over it, and Sadly, No! decisively slapped it.

But surely I'm being hyperbolic here! I mean, we have differences of opinion in this country, but it's not like anyone's comparing workers' rights advocates to the Taliban. Right?

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A lot of my posts here pertain to corporate responsibility-- most specifically and most often, with the halting attempts of America's largest retailer to fully grasp and embrace the meaning of that term, especially as it pertains to its employees.

This is because of my association with Wake-Up Wal-Mart and my dedication to the group's agenda.

Generally in this pursuit, I oscillate between a tone of detached snark and one of outraged derision toward the company, so I've been fairly described as having "an axe to grind."

I've been speechless since Black Friday. No snark, and it's hard to even muster outrage. There was a great thread here on the events of that day, and one as well on Daily Kos.

I still don't know what to say, but Meghan Scott of Wake-Up Wal-Mart has just issued the following statement:

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Supposedly, Walmart is family friendly.

Supposedly, the company is specifically focused on facilitating the needs of mothers.

Walmart's silly, pandering, new "Eleven Moms" campaign-- consisting, no kidding, of 19 rather than 11 bargain-hunting, values-beaming women bloggers-- will probably serve its intended purpose of buoying the brand through the upcoming holiday season.

But to peel back the facile PR facade-- to examine real real stories of women's experiences at Walmart's stores-- is to see something else entirely:

Heather Silvis says she felt bullied when Wal-Mart associates told her she could not breastfeed her baby in the store on Two Notch Road.

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Cross-posted to Daily Kos

In a brilliant, stunning move indicating their mastery of the PR field, America's largest retailer has just released a press release, the real meat of which is how good they are at press releases... press releases that are so transparently phony that my cat rolled his eyes at me when I read it aloud.

The thing is, they release press releases about their policies all the time-- about as often as they proclaim that they're ~rolling back prices~ or ~helping you live better~ or whatever truckload of utter crap they're using for a slogan these days.

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(Cross-posted at Daily Kos)

Alright-- this could descend into hyperbole way too easily. But the fact is that Walmart is selling a bassinet that strangled 4 infants before it was recalled by the company that makes it-- and which has now killed two more, because it would be silly to take something off the shelves before you've exhausted the stock, after all.

The most recent death occurred last week on Thursday when six-and-a-half-month-old Kennedy Brotherton slipped between the mattress and the side railing after the mattress came loose from the frame, her aunt, Melissa Brotherton, told ConsumerAffairs.com in a phone interview.

Kennedy's body slipped through a space between the mattress and the railing until she dangled by her head on the lower bar of the railing and choked, according to Capt. Ron Copeland of the Shawnee Police Department in Kansas.

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