Maven: Making a Target out of Wal-Mart
08/19/06 - 11:56 AM EDT
Marek Fuchs
How bad have things been going for Wal-Mart (WMT Quote - Cramer on WMT - Stock Picks)? Well, thanks to a public comment by one of its officials this week, even Arabs and Jews are agreeing: They hate Wal-Mart. That makes what Dell (DELL Quote - Cramer on DELL - Stock Picks) has been doing, what with its portables apparently igniting ammo stashes in customer's pickup trucks, look like fun in the sun.
But let's back up for a moment and be careful not to run over any toes. It started to become clear this week in the wider media that Wal-Mart is becoming a populist target for politicians running for office this year, and that the company and its practices might remain a bogeyman for the coming presidential election. As The Business Press Maven has noted recently, Wal-Mart doesn't need any more trouble, even though it got some this week when Andrew Young, a civil rights leader the company hired to help burnish its image, said that Jewish, Arab and Korean shop owners have been stealing from urban communities for years. What burnish. And you thought Wal-Mart had problems with its fashion mix. As awful as Young's comments were, the larger issue is the demagoguery coming at Wal-Mart from all Democratic directions -- even from Hillary Clinton, the ingrate, who used to sit on their board. Didn’t anyone give her some backdated options to keep her happy? Isn’t what those things are designed for? In any case, since the wider media doesn't focus on the investor, and the business media, if they ever pick up on this story, won't offer historical perspective, let me do it succinctly here.
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