Why Did Wal-Mart Go Gay?

Nick Gillespie | September 5, 2006

That's the frothy headline for Kevin McCullough's recent Townhall column about the Bentonville Behemoth's decision to have a "Wal-Mart Vice President now sit on the [National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce] task force."

Without explaining exactly what Wal-Mart is doing, McCullough waxes elegiac about the good old days at the nation's--indeed, the world's--largest retailer, when he shopped there "for tools, electronics, camping gear and other life essentials" without having to worry about running into the Rosie O'Donnells of retail (she was too busy, one assumes, cruising K Mart aisles with Penny Marshall):

During college basketball days when the team would be on the road, we never felt far from home if we could load up on CD's, Slim-Jims (the beef snack - not automobile door openers), and Mountain Dew, and zip through the smiley face check-out lane.

Now that's all ashes because Wal-Mart has gone tuitty-fruitty. By McCullough's own lights, what Wal-Mart does with its time and money should be of little concern to anyone other than the company's stockholders and employees:

It's not my business if you're shacking up with your girlfriend but you don't have the chutzpah to marry her. It's God's business - but not mine. If you're openly cheating on your married spouse - you are the one who will have to pay the price for that knowledge being public. But then again, who would benefit if you did? Whatever your appetite in sexual desire, men, women, pets, and blow-up dolls - in a civilized society - it should never be in good taste to discuss it publicly.

So why is Wal-Mart now spending resources in time, attention and money to promote same gender sexual behavior?... Would they do the same for adulterers? Pedophiles? Men who like sheep?

Let's leave aside the gratuitous--but ubiquitous--conservative equation of homosexuality with bestiality for the moment and wonder if Wal-Mart might know its business better than Blue State cons such as McCullough, who seem to be too busy prancing about in modern Sodom to check out the low, low prices available in the real America:

Admittedly I haven't been in a Wal-Mart in about three years. New York City seems to have a chip on its shoulder about them and won't seem to let them come with arm's reach of Manhattan.

Can Wal-Mart's bottom line survive the alienation of former customers? We'll just have to wait and see, especially since McCullough calls for his readers to print out a protest letter and send it to Wal-Mart execs.

Whole thing here.

Comments

|9.5.06 @ 3:54PM|#

So why is Wal-Mart now spending resources in time, attention and money to promote same gender sexual behavior?... Would they do the same for adulterers? Pedophiles? Men who like sheep?

Does this guy get paid for this garbage? Well, I suppose it is pretty entertaining, although a gay person might not think so.

To answer his questions: Gays have money too. No. No. and No.

Not so hard. I hope he reads this someday and gets de-flummoxed.

Jennifer|9.5.06 @ 4:09PM|#

Whatever your appetite in sexual desire, men, women, pets, and blow-up dolls - in a civilized society - it should never be in good taste to discuss it publicly.

Which is why I have no idea if Kevin McCullough prefers sex with men or women--because whatever his appetite in sexual desire is, McCullough has the good taste to not mention it publicly.

Tim Cavanaugh|9.5.06 @ 4:09PM|#

If you're openly cheating on your married spouse

Actually, I'm openly cheating on my unmarried spouse, but I'm doing it in secret.

|9.5.06 @ 4:17PM|#

Now that's all ashes because Wal-Mart has gone tuitty-fruitty.


This reminded me: Sunday I saw Little Richard live (barely) in concert (not by my choice). My review, in a word: weird. He ended every inter-song commentary with, "Shut up!". And (easily the highlight of the set), he made allusion to his Geico commercial!

|9.5.06 @ 4:29PM|#

That's the frothy headline...

Is "santorumy" a word?

dhex|9.5.06 @ 4:31PM|#

hold the fuck up...

he lives in MANHATTAN?

once again i must offer the god of farce a dvd copy of white girls! ho lord farcicus, he who maketh us unableth to believeth in anythingeth, thank ye!

|9.5.06 @ 4:44PM|#

smacky:

Cool! Little Richard has always sounded like an entertaining (in a weird way) showman.

|9.5.06 @ 4:50PM|#

Wait a second. This guy wants everyone to print out his flyers to "hand them out at church, to your neighbors, and to the customer service desk of your local Wal-Mart" and the fucker hasn't even shopped there for 3 YEARS?! Talk about a sanctimonious prick. He probably hides in his Manhattan apartment, afraid to go outside because he's afraid his neighbors might give him the ghey.

|9.5.06 @ 5:09PM|#

It's not my business if you're shacking up with your girlfriend but you don't have the chutzpah to marry her.

Doesn't cohabiting require chutpah than getting married? I can't remember the last time I heard a married couple getting grief over being married.

Don't let McCullough's denials fool you. A quick look at his other columns will show that every bit of his identity in wrapped up in condemning the sexual practices of others. And showing how those practices will destroy America.

|9.5.06 @ 5:15PM|#

It's not my business if you're shacking up with your girlfriend but you don't have the chutzpah to marry her.

Doesn't cohabiting require chutpah than getting married? I can't remember the last time I heard a married couple getting grief over being married.

Don't let McCullough's denials fool you. A quick look at his other columns will show that every bit of his identity in wrapped up in condemning the sexual practices of others and showing how those practices will destroy America.

Jennifer|9.5.06 @ 5:22PM|#

If getting married requires chutzpah, that's a pretty damnable indictment of the institution.

|9.5.06 @ 5:28PM|#

What's the news here? I've always thought shopping at Wal-mart was pretty gay.

|9.5.06 @ 5:46PM|#

"Admittedly I haven't been in a Wal-Mart in about three years. New York City seems to have a chip on its shoulder about them and won't seem to let them come with arm's reach of Manhattan."

If he really wanted to check one out it wouldn't be that hard. I don't what "arm's reach" is but having recently spent several months stuck working in NJ, I know for a fact there is a Walmart in Secaucus that is all of 5 miles from Midtown via the Holland Tunnel.

|9.5.06 @ 5:54PM|#

And (easily the highlight of the set), he made allusion to his Geico commercial!

His commercial has easily been the most entertaining thing on TV since it started airing.

|9.5.06 @ 7:07PM|#

The question is, why was Walmart in the closet for so long?

fyodor|9.5.06 @ 7:20PM|#

I think by "chutzpah" he must have meant "cojones". Overlapping in meaning, but very different in connotation!

|9.5.06 @ 7:44PM|#

I think that McCullough demonstrates his lack of authority on the matter by admitting that he knows too few gay and lesbian individuals to refer to anything other than his limited knowledge about gay sex. He repeatedly refers to this announcement as encouraging gay sex and to the gay community as being defined by what they do in the bedroom.

I find it hypocritical for him to talk so much about Wal-Mart as previously having been a family-centered corporation rather than a sex-oriented one. How dare heterosexual "families" repeatedly lecture others about their tendency to have vaginal sex and produce children! Does McCullough think that we really need to think about how they love to go into the bedroom and procreate?

|9.5.06 @ 7:53PM|#

I should note that those who attend the events of LGBT political and business organisations will hear precious little about sex. I find that they tend to be dominated by sociological theory on gender and discrimination, or discussion of the spending power of the gay community in the economy. I suspect that most readers of this blog would be bored to tears at such an event.

|9.5.06 @ 8:21PM|#

One thing is for sure: Reasonoids have had zero impact on WalMart PR policy.
I recall getting my pantyhose in a knot a few years back when WalMart was waving the flag and claiming to get all their products from "hard-working" Amurikuns.
Anyone else recall that?
(Even Jeff Foxworthy knows EVERYTHING comes from China. So what?)

Here's the thing: Imagine how low their "Always Low Prices" could be if they had always taken Reasonoid advice! Boggles the mind.

Keep in mind that wierd thinking seems to spontaneously combust from Arkansas: Fullbright; one of the Rockefellers; Slick Willie, and others.

|9.5.06 @ 11:08PM|#

Whatever your appetite in sexual desire, men, women, pets, and blow-up dolls - in a civilized society - it should never be in good taste to discuss it publicly.

I'm sorry Kev, but those of us who don't share your neuroses don't feel the need to impose censorship on the rest of humanity in the name of your imaginary friend, God.

If living in a "civilized society" means existing in a world where everyone is a anal retentive and sexually repressed as this Fundie pile-of-shit (opps, sorry for the redundancy), then I'll gladly open the gates for the barbarians and let them ransack the Shining City On A Hill. A nation of prudes that poses as a "free society" has no right to exist.

dhex|9.6.06 @ 12:48AM|#

akira, my dear shut-in, you misunderstand; we can be a nation of prudes, so long as the might of the state is not brought to bear.

gay marriage for everybody!

|9.6.06 @ 1:01AM|#

Akira you're my hero.

oncogenesis|9.6.06 @ 4:17AM|#

I made the mistake of wading into the comments section of th cited article. The following from "florin" is representative:

Let's say that up to 10% are gay at one time. Why am I a bigot to express the opinion of the majority?

Bottom line, gay is gross.

It really is a scary world out there.

|9.6.06 @ 1:05PM|#

"Let's leave aside the gratuitous--but ubiquitous--conservative equation of homosexuality with bestiality..."

not to mention, the conflation of homosexuality with pedophilia

|9.6.06 @ 4:13PM|#

Dex:

akira, my dear shut-in, you misunderstand; we can be a nation of prudes, so long as the might of the state is not brought to bear.

Ah, but though I freely admit to being a "shut in" I like to think that I have far healthier attitude toward sexuality than our WalMart friend here.

As much as prigs like McCullough like to claim our sex lives are a matter betwix us as individuals and HIS God, the history of politics and religion tells us that the prudes can't help themselves but to bring the "might of state" down upon who they think is sinful, heretical, or blasphemous. After all, they just might lead them into temptation.

In short, I don't trust the bluenoses to make an effort to keep their faith out off my sex life and I never will.

|9.7.06 @ 3:39PM|#

Sunumbitch! Radley Balko had me fooled. In an attempt to highlight how absurd this article was, Radley claimed it was brilliant satire, that hit all the bases of redstate homophobes, spot-on. I read the article, and I thought it WAS satire. Until I came here...damn, that WAS good.