grief to anger
16 Mar 2006Wal-Mart has a really poignant commercial going around. There’s a cuter-than-necessary-but-sufficiently-bedraggled kid sitting at a lunch table at school, looking forlorn, lonely and awkward because he doesn’t have a lunch (been there). But luckily, his friend sneaks him an orange, which gives him a break into the lunch-table trading system, allowing him to eat [insert economic metaphorical commentary here – made doubly ironic by the fact that it’s a commercial for Wal-Mart].
This commercial really gets me – I tear up every time. It’s a beautiful piece of work. And then I see that it’s an ad for Wal-Mart, and it quickly mutates into a slightly disgusted form of rage.
I assume the part of the commercial they don’t show is where the kid goes home, hoping to ask his mom why the hell he didn’t have a lunch to eat, but she’s nowhere to be found, since she’s busy busting her ass on an unscheduled shift, even though she didn’t get shit last week, but hey, them’s the breaks.
Let the anti-pro Wal-Mart debate begin.
Excellent observation with great perspective makes for a fantastic post.
Your observation is all the more ironic considering just a couple months ago Wal-Mart stopped donations of perishable foods to local food banks from all its stores and Sam’s Clubs instead just tossing the food citing fear of lawsuits (except there is a Good Samaritan law that would protect them except in cases of Gross Negligence which makes you wonder how good they feel about their own food if they are afraid the hungry might get sick from it). Wal-Mart said it would concentrate on cash donations although the amounts wouldn’t increase.
Wal-Mart: Turning the Hungry Into Customers
Now Wal-Mart is matching customers and employees donations up to $5 million. Sounds like quite a lot but not only will Wal-Mart take credit for ALL donations when it hands it over but the amount it might match is less than 2 days worth of publicity Wal-Mart usually spends bombarding us with the Wal-Mart way.
So all the Wal-Mart food that gets thrown out is still a write-off for them and a void in the belly of the hungry.
But how many of those hungry are hungry because they work at Wal-Mart?
Wal-Mart Apologists: “Let Them Eat Crap!”