Oh so hip Wal-Mart

Another Wal-Mart Shareholders' Meeting has descended upon my hometown, Fayetteville. And more pop stars have joined the Wal-Mart Hall of Shame, lending their voices to shill for one of the world's premier anti-labor corporations. This year brought us: Will Smith, Black Eyed Peas, Alicia Keyes, Darius Rucker, and Bob Seger. Previous years have brought such luminaries as J-Lo, Beyoncé, Kool and the Gang, Journey, Shakira, Taylor Swift...the list goes on and on.

Okay, let's forget about workers' rights, for the sake of argument. The Walmart Visitors' Center in Bentonville, on the site of Sam Walton's original Five and Dime store in that city, sits right across the street from a statue to Confederate soldier James Berry, erected on the town square in 1908 by the Daughters of the Confederacy. You can see how close that monument to the heroes of the War of Treasonous Secession is to the monument to corporate America from the photo above, which I shot on a visit to Bentonville a couple weeks ago.

Seriously, Will & Fergie & Alicia, couldn't you at least ask why Wal-Mart, with all its corporate power, doesn't insist that the statue to those who fought for their Confederate home and fatherland be taken down? Do you really need the money that badly?

And seriously, why does no one ever seem to complain about the fact that our beloved pop stars cavort so shamelessly for corporate power?

And then there's the issue of Crystal Bridges, the museum of American art that will open in Bentonville this November. It was initiated with funds from Alice Walton (daughter of Sam, founder of Wal-Mart, and the 8th richest American -- 3 of her siblings are alson in the top 10), and just received another huge endowment from the Walton Family Foundation. It will be a fabulous museum, and the architecture and the site promise, according to all reports, to be amazing. (Expect a report in the New Yorker soon.) And at the same time it will serve the function of art-washing: to clean up the Wal-Mart image through the Walton family's "disinterested" support of culture and the arts.

Cleo Cola: Popular Orientalism

Cleo Cola, a photo by tsweden on Flickr.

I found this item at the Walmart Visitors Center (the Walmart museum) in Bentonville. It's part of a display of soft drinks that used to be sold in Bentonville over the last several decades. Cleo Cola, the "Queen of sparkling drinks," bottled in St. Louis, was introduced in 1935 by the Whistle Company.



Note the resemblance of the outfit worn by Cleo to the popular Orientalism developed by the likes of Maude Allen and other Salomé dancers. I posted about this briefly here.

Hummos-spotting: Dearborn Wal-Mart

This AP story, about the Wal-Mart supercenter that opened last week in Dearborn, appeared today in my local paper (the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette). Maybe you saw it too. What is notable about this store, serving the largest Arab-American community in the US, is that Aisle 3 features lots of Arabic food items, including hummos and baba ghanouj.


And: "The Dearborn store also sells Arabic music [Haifa Wehbe, I hope: hawgblawg] and plans to offer Muslim greeting cards. But the modifications go beyond merchandise: It has 35 employees who speak Arabic - noted in Arabic script on their badges. The store also has hired a local Arab-American educator to teach the staff cultural sensitivity."

But will it have a negative impact on the neighborhood stores that have traditionally supplied mamoul and fava beans and Turkish coffee to Dearborn's Arab community? According to Patricia Edwards, "portfolio manager and retail analyst in the Seattle office of San Francisco-based investment manager Wentworth, Hauser & Violich, which has 537,000 shares of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. stock," "Wal-Mart is a little kinder and gentler than they were 10 years ago. They are fierce competitors ... but I don't think they're trying to do a scorched earth policy..."

Do you believe her?

Does corporate "recognition" of Arab-American identity constitute a progressive political move? What would Naomi Klein (No Logo) say? Discuss.

Walmart Hall of Shame: J-Lo joins Beyoncé

Here are some of the the bands who performed (pimped for Walmart) in Fayetteville last week as part of the annual Walmart Shareholders' meeting:

Tuesday, May 29: Fall Out Boy, in a concert (for the first time ever at a Walmart shareholders meeting) open to the public.

Wednesday, May 30: The Eagles (Walmart employees only). The Eagles' forthcoming album will be sold exclusively in Walmart stores!

Thursday, May 31. Kool and the Gang and Hall & Oates, also open to the public. Walmart goes all out this year for the Northwest Arkansas public. (Robert "Kool" Bell and his brother Ronald, leaders of Kool and the Gang, are members of the Nation of Islam, as far as I am aware.)

Friday, June 1. At the Wal-Mart shareholders "meeting" (more like a revival meeting) at Bud Walton Arena: the special guest artists are Jennifer Lopez
and the newest American Idol winner, Jordin Sparks. The event is MC'd by Sindbad. J-Lo joins Beyoncé--last year's performer at the Shareholder's Meeting--in the Walmart Hall of Shame.

Meanwhile, the local progressive group Against the Wal organized protests, for the fourth consecutive year. Suggested reading for J-Lo and Robert "Kool" Bell: the recent Human Rights Watch report on Walmart, “Discounting Rights: Wal-Mart’s Violation of US Workers’ Right to Freedom of Association.” (Walmart is only the second corporation to be investigated by Human Rights Watch.)