The Wal-Mart Thought Police

By Amy Schiller, Campus Progress. Posted August 16, 2005.

Wal-Mart, America's largest retailer, prides itself on being a "family-friendly" store, with smiley faces guiding stressed-out breadwinners to a land of low-cost, guilt-free consumption.

Indeed, there are mega Wal-Marts that inhabit spaces the size of five football fields, and the total square footage of all of the Wal-Mart stores nationwide tops 25 million square feet.

As you have probably heard, the "everyday low prices" at these concrete boxes of utopian consumption have tremendous costs for our environment, our workers, our wages, our communities, and the public coffers. But they also come at the expense of free speech and artistic expression, as the corporation targets items that often include progressive criticism of conservative values.

Based in Bentonville, AR, the brand behemoth has become the self-appointed culture police by screening the music, books and magazines that many Americans will be able to access -- in a number of communities, Wal-Mart is the only convenient store in the area stocking culture products.

Take, for example, Wal-Mart's refusal to sell Sheryl Crow's self-titled album in 1996, citing objections to a lyric that criticized Wal-Mart for selling handguns (a practice that the chain has since discontinued), which they felt was "unfair and irresponsible."

Much as Crow probably appreciated the paternalistic advice, as the No. 1 CD retailer in the world (yes, the world) with sales accounting for 10% of total domestic CD sales, a Wal-Mart boycott can result in hundreds of thousands in lost album sales.

The record industry, never too proud to bend over for sales, has started issuing two versions of the same album, one "sanitized." Sometimes this entails altering the cover art, as John Mellencamp was asked to do for his album Mr. Happy Go Lucky, whose cover featured an angel and devil in the background. Nirvana actually changed its song title from "Rape Me" to "Waif Me" for the Wal-Mart version. Both they and the Goo Goo Dolls came under fire for portraying babies in their cover art as well. The cover of the Goo Goo Dolls album titled "A Boy Named Goo" featured a baby covered in blackberry juice; Wal-Mart banned it and only reversed its decision under pressure from the media.

Wal-Mart's official statement on music is as follows: "Wal-Mart will not stock music with parental guidance stickers. While Wal-Mart sets high standards, it would not be possible to eliminate every image, word or topic that an individual might find objectionable. And the goal is not to eliminate the need for parents to review the merchandise their children buy. The policy simply helps eliminate the most objectionable material from Wal-Mart's shelves."

Objectionable material like a book cover with a comedian posing with an American flag and a bald eagle? Actually, yes. The huge bestseller, America: the Book, featuring Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and the rest of the Daily Show crew, was banned from Wal-Mart in 2004. Granted, the company objected to the infamous page 99 featuring obviously photoshopped naked pictures of Supreme Court justices (just think, now we can all look at Justice O'Connor's wrinkled, saggy flesh with great nostalgia.)

Stewart is not the only comedian with a book banned by Wal-Mart, though; a shipment of George Carlin's When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops was returned, citing a mistake in ordering the book in the first place. A mistake which probably had nothing to do with Carlin's cover of himself inserted into the Last Supper.

Perhaps there is some legitimacy (however hysterical) to their objections to irreverent images. Yet the political bias inherent in Wal-Mart's criteria became clearer when Wal-Mart's merchandiser for films found Robert Greenwald's acclaimed documentary, "Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War," (produced with the support of the Center for American Progress) inappropriate for Wal-Mart. For no conceivable reason could a documentary involving no gratuitous violence, expletives, or sex be inappropriate, other than its criticism of a conservative political administration.

Pathetically, the rationale for these items is that they "would not appeal to the majority of our customers" or would offend those proverbial family values. Fine, if they know their designated market and have complaints pouring in from their consumers. Except that those two books were both fixtures on the bestseller list for months and Sheryl Crow, Nirvana and the Goo Goo Dolls are top selling entertainers. And those items that are not religiously objectionable demonstrate the degree of hypocrisy within the "family values" standards.

Even something as potentially broadly appealing, positive, and utterly non-offensive as a T-shirt reading "Someday a woman will be president" was pulled from the sales floor because "the message goes against Wal-Mart family values." So old school patriarchy and sexism are Wal-Mart values? Seems a little retrograde and moot in the age of "take your daughter to work day."

Amy Schiller is a student at Brandeis University.

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