Wal-Mart buys in to selling Christmas
According to a piece in The Boston Herald, the first shot in the Annual War Against Christmas has been fired across the bows of Wal*Mart, and the brobdignagian general merchandiser has struck its colors like a Velveeta-eating surrender monkey:
Wal-Mart is rolling back its avoidance of all things “Christmas” to once again shout out the word some competitors have watered down to “holiday.”
“I think we learned a lesson last year,” Wal-Mart spokesman Steven Restivo said. “We listened to our customers. There’s a call to return to a core Merry Christmas message. We’re proud to say Christmas is back at Wal-Mart this year.”
A “core Merry Christmas message.” Well, this either means that Karl Rove, despite having taken a shellacking in Tuesday’s election, has sold Wal*Mart on the genius of his base-focused marketing approach, or else the gigantic retailer has ditched it mission statement and big box locations, and will now operate exclusively out of abandoned storefronts in malls, selling Christmas decorations and thematically-related gimcrackery between November 1st and December 25th, before vanishing, Brigadoon-like, on New Years Eve.
The Arkansas-based retail giant with mom-and-pop-store appeal announced yesterday it has replaced its Holiday Shops with Christmas Shops. Wal-Mart will feature “Days ’Til Christmas” countdowns. The Salvation Army will be its charitable partner.
Emphasis mine. For some reason, this phrase makes me think that the author of the article, Laurel J. Sweet, wrote it near deadline, with a can on Redbull on one side of her keyboard and a Wal*Mart press release on the other.
Wal-Mart needn’t fear it will receive a lump of coal in its stocking or see its 44 Bay State stores picketed by the Coalition to Save Christmas in Massachusetts.
Yes, when a bully has you down on the ground in a headlock and is punching you in the face, he’ll usually stop once you give up your lunch money, if only to conserve his strength for the impending War on Easter.
“It’s starting to feel like ‘Miracle on 34th Street,’ ” said Lynnfield developer Robert Marley, who started the coalition this week with his brother, Kevin, and friends.
With a name like Marley, you’d think it would be feeling more like A Christmas Carol. However, if this is the kind of thing he and his brother do when they get together with their friends, all I can say is, somebody needs to buy this group some Dockers and a case of Lowenbrau.
Marley said he has received e-mails of support from as far away as California and the Middle East.
That’s nice. Enjoy the warm glow of recognition while it lasts, Mr. Marley. Because even as we speak, Bill O’Reilly and John Gibson are racing each other to the nearest camera to claim credit for Wal*Mart’s capitulation.
“You want our money? Then recognize why you’re taking it,” he said.
Because you’re rapacious, slave labor-enabling bastards who lay waste to American small businesses like the gigantic reaper in a Black Plague-era woodcut and whose collective social conscience makes Cornelius Vanderbilt look like Warren Buffet?
Or was that a rhetorical question?
“But, why does a bum like me have to stand up and get this done? Where are our religious leaders?”
They’re out getting a massage at the moment, Bob. Any other scheduling issues I can help you with?
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Left by sonitus.org » Blog Archive » Have a Coke and a Heil on November 10th, 2006