John Edwards and Wal-Mart: Playstation Before Principle

Former Senator and John Kerry running mate John Edwards hates Wal-Mart. He says they’re unfair to their labor and generally a stain on America.

But they also have lots of Playstation 3’s at reasonable prices! Well, maybe not lots, and they might be pricey, but still, what to do?

What you do is try and get one at Wal-Mart and then blame a young staffer for the blunder, which is what ended up happenning.

The funniest part is that only the day before, Edwards spoke to an anti Wal-Mart group:

[Edwards] 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.

I also hear that Edwards asked the crowd to raise their hands and scream “yes” if they believe Wal-Mart is unfair to labor, and/or if they’ve ever suffered a neck injury from a passenger-side airbag.

But John Edwards isn’t alone in his quest for Wal-Mart hypocrisy and irony.

Among the others who consistently chastise Wal-Mart for “not providing affordable health care” is one of the reasons health care costs so much: Ted Kennedy. Sen. Kennedy even wrote something called “The Ten Commandments for Wal-Mart.”

Kennedy has spent an inordinate amount of his life violating any number of the actual Ten Commandments, along with eliminating biblical principles from public debate, and all of a sudden he stumbles down from the mountaintop carrying a stone tablet like some kind of gin-blossomed Wal-Mart Moses?

There are others.

Last summer, in Henderson, Nev., a labor union hired some temporary workers to picket outside a Wal-Mart. The picketers were hired to walk outside the store and protest the low wages, lack of benefits, and lousy working conditions Wal-Mart provides to its employees.

Oh, one more thing. The union who hired the picketers paid them less than the starting wage Wal-Mart pays, gave them no benefits, and made them picket in 104-degree heat. All to protest the low wages, zero benefits, and lousy working conditions inside the air conditioned store.

The issue of wages brings us back full circle to the Edwards story: His “staffer” was a volunteer! Who is John Edwards to talk about low wages? You can’t get much lower than an ultra-wealthy man who has people working for him for free – and you’ve got him trying to track down a Playstation 3 for your kid no less?

Life would really suck without accidental comedians.

———-

Note: If you’re seeing only this post, the entire blog can be accessed at DougPowers.com

This entry was posted on Friday, November 17th, 2006 at 8:18 am and is filed under Current Events, Vox Populi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. | 6 views | Trackback | Print this page |

| More from Doug Powers