Respect Authority

Alright, let me preface this (undoubtedly-going-to-be-long) post by saying I don’t watch political commercials. In fact, I watch very few commercials at all, thanks in large part to the magnificent invention of DVR, which is in my eyes on par with creations like electricity and microwavable breakfast sandwiches. But when I do catch political ads—the loud voice-overs, the poorly done slideshows, the requisite pull-quotes—I find myself actually less inclined to vote for whoever is being promoted, simply because I’d prefer my elected leaders know better than to annoy the shit out of me.

That said, I understand that not everyone is quite so attentive. Rather, for some, the mere mention of a political candidate might be enough to sink the moniker in their psyche so irreversibly that come election day they vote without thinking, without realizing the John Smith whose box they just checked actually denies the Holocaust, hates black people and kills puppies in his spare time.

So I imagine it is with these people in mind that outrage has erupted over the Supreme Court’s decision this week to strike down decades-old limits on corporate political expenditures, thereby permitting businesses and unions to spend freely on commercials for or against political candidates.

Some companies and union leaders have already said they will take advantage of the new freedom to participate more directly in this year’s congressional campaign, while others are perhaps waiting for the hubbub to die down before admitting their own undeniable special interests. I have no doubt that America’s largest corporations, along with its largest unions, are thrilled to be able to put their mountains of cash to use pushing candidates whose interests and policies align with their own. Even if said companies are still restricted from direct contributions to candidates (as they have been for more than a century), and even if any political messages created by corporations or unions must be disclosed as such. Undeniably, this is a big week for the idea of money as power. Read More ›

I know I’m more than a few days late on this story, and even though the reality is that I’ve been exceedingly lazy and disinclined to write snarky commentary on the news, let’s pretend it’s because it took me almost an entire week to come to grips with the fact that we live in a world where people actually get trampled by frantic shoppers.

Just in case you live under a rock, or in any equally secluded location where things like “Wal-Mart” and “national news” have yet to rear their ugly heads, the papers have been awash with stories of Jdimytai Damour, the 34-year-old Wal-Mart employee who was literally trampled to death on Black Friday by a hoard of rollback-crazed shoppers.

In a statement this week, Wal-Mart said the company planned to reach out to Damour’s family to “do what we can to help them through this difficult time,” a statement rendered entirely moot by the fact that they’ll have to do something when a lawsuit filed against them by the guy’s family yields a multi-million dollar settlement. Not that any amount of money could negate the absurdity if having to tell friends and relatives that your family member was stomped to death by heartless discount freaks.

The saddest part about this story is that there’s no one to blame. Sure, Wal-Mart is an evil corporation for whom an in-store trampling is but a drop in a much larger bucket of eternal damnation, but you can’t really scapegoat a store for the actions of its patrons. Even if Wal-Mart should have had more than one person holding back the masses, the fact that hundreds of civilians let this happen is enough to make me think a more appropriate punishment would have been burning the store to the ground – with all its would-be Black Friday shoppers still inside.