By Mark Rahner, Journal and Courier
Think trailer park Nazis.
Achtung: Wal-Mart has announced it's buying 74 superstores in Germany, where Nietzsche would have called them uberstores.
Add 'em to the 21 stores already owned there by the sinister retail giant based in Bentonville, Ark. Teutonic Wal-Mart greeters tell customers, "Show me your papers!"
Wal-Mart already has more than 2,000 stores in the United States and has begun to seek liebensraum in Canada and Mexico. President and CEO Bob Martin said, "Our activities in the German market mark a start into a Europe-wide expansion."
Intelligence sources report Wal-Mart next plans to invade Poland.
Most people can sum up the evil of Wal-Mart with just two words: Kathy Lee.
And if you've ever been inside one, you know they look like live-action Far Side cartoons.
Now white trash people can take the European vacations they've always wanted. The old couple in the TV commercial who stop at Wal-Marts wherever they go because it feels like home can travel to Berlin, where Ronald Reagan, previously misquoted, actually once orated, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this Wal-Mart!"
Then they can stop for a bite with Herr Ronald at McDonalds, pick up a prescription at a Rite-Aid, some barbed wire at Home Depot and a Malibu Klaus Barbie at Toys R Us -- known there by the vaguely Kennedyesque name, Ich Bin Eine Toy.
Wal-Marts are the real American embassies, not stuffed-shirt official buildings. Each store is a giant oasis that embodies the American Ideal of More/Bigger/Cheaper/Shoddier. And it's the world's largest employer, with about 825,000 workers.
Wal-Mart is a patriotic All-American operation that makes its duds the Classic American way: with swarthy people in Third World countries. It buys clothes from about 4,000 overseas factories, which dirty pinko critics sometimes call "sweat shops."
Maybe you missed this commercial: The Wal-Mart happy face whistles a jaunty tune and bounces on prices, making the numerals fall off to reveal lower numbers. Except they're wages.
In Mexico, the happy face bounces off of the U.S. minimum wage of $5.15 an hour, and the numbers tumble away to show 54 cents an hour! In Indonesia, the happy face blithely turns $5.15 into 10 cents! In southern China, the happy face cheerfully lights on a sign that becomes 37 cents an hour and keeps getting lower!
This year, the National Labor Committee showed that Wal-Mart leads the retail industry in marketing clothes made overseas: more than 85 percent of its private-label clothes, compared with the industry average of about 50 percent. About 89 percent of Kathy Lee's rags are made abroad, mostly in Mexico and Indonesia.
Wal-Mart refused to tell the locations of its overseas factories for human rights monitors to check working conditions, said to be abhorrent. They've got the bouncing happy face.
In every community where it rears its head, the Wal-Viathan withers smaller businesses that can't compete with its prices. As the world's largest retailer, its sales last year were $118 billion, with profits more than $3 billion. And it makes each place a little uglier by making it more uniform.
Nothing can halt Wal-Mart's march of world domination, although grass-roots groups have established beach heads in a few places. The Massachusetts group, Sprawl-Busters, says a mere 86 communities have rejected megastores including Wal-Mart and Sam's Club, as well as Home Depot and Rite-Aid.
Because Wal-Mart speaks the coarse, gutteral language more common than the new "euro" coin: Bottom Line.
Rahner is a reporter for the Journal and Courier. Write him at the Journal and Courier, 217 N. Sixth St., Lafayette, IN, 47901 or through e-mail at mrahner@yahoo.com.
Copyright © 1998, Federated Publications Inc.
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