Bentonville, we have a problem

Does this bother anyone else besides me? This week it's Carlin, last week it was Jon Steward. What's next, books with political philosophies they disagree with?

First, the obvious, how can a company who sells to 80 some odd million people a week all around the country say that a particular book, CD, DVD, or anything else doesn't appeal to its customer base? They're a general products store, not a Christian bookstore. People shop at Wal-mart because it's cheap, not because of it's moral values. If moral values were an issue no one would shop at Wal-mart because of the way they take advantage of their employees and 3rd world sweat shops.

This leads to my second point. Arbitrarily not selling a product on moral grounds is censorship. Given that Wal-mart has displaced other shopping options in many rural communities, this type of corporate censorship is bad. It's a disservice to the community that shops at Wal-mart and an abuse of corporate power that should be stopped. If you become the only place in town where consumers can by books, CDs, and movies, who are you to say what I should and should not be buying? This is corporate monopolistic behavior at it's worst and it wrong, flat out wrong. If you're the only shopping outlet in a community because of your corporate size and ability to run everyone else out of town you should have a legal obligation to carry everything, even if it's moderately offensive. I'll exclude porn from this requirement only because most of the country finds porn offensive while most will not find either of these books offensive. I think Team America is a good case in point.

Okay, I'm done. I just had to get that out. Carry on.