I just read this post on Pajamas Media…
“Roger Simon details the saga of the Edelman PR firm, which has admitted to creating “flogs”—fake weblogs, that is—to promote companies like Walmart.”
After reading a couple of the links, articles, and comments from that post I thought it might be good to explain why I plug Wal Mart every chance I get here on my own blog.
First and foremost, I am trying to send a message to the PC police in our society that I will not be bullied into shopping or not shopping at a certain store based on “Progressive” values.
Funny Story:
I use a cleaning lady every once in a while when my asthma is acting up. She is a Boulderite, really nice gal, but after being here to help with dusting a time or two it came out when I was watching Fox News one day to check on things in Iraq, (my brother was serving in Iraq that year and I watched the news constantly to hear what was up), that I was a rabid conservative and she was a liberal, or Progressive, as she refers to herself. She has all the talking points memorized for her various arguments and we have had some fun debates and conversations.
I flat out told her that if she was in my house and I was paying her money that she was absolutely not allowed to bash President Bush in my home, but that I supported her right to bash him all she wanted out of my house.
She has been pretty good about that, but one day it was so cute when she confessed to me, all guilty and sheepish, that she shopped at Wal Mart every once in a while. I just about lost it laughing when she made her Confession. I promised that I was not going to judge her for her choice of shopping location, and that I shopped at Wal Mart at least once a week and sometimes twice a week. She looked me in the eye, and then said “all that stuff is just so dang cheap!”.
I agree.
If I had the cash, I would shop for all of our families groceries at Vitamin Cottage and purchase everything Organic. Or I would go to Boulder to shop at Whole Foods, or Wild Oats, or even our local Grocery store, King Soopers, where most organic foods can be purchased for reasonable prices.
But we have a large family, and depending on the week, even with me cooking a huge portion of our daily fare from scratch, I still go to wal mart once a week to purchase the foods to make my kids lunches, and to get certain types of cheeses, and I love their salsa. I buy bread products like tortillas, corn chips, and hoagie buns. Or I go to Sam’s Club to bulk purchase toilet paper, or ziploc bags, or garbage bags, or olive oil, or honey, or peanut butter.
Fact is, feeding a family is expensive. And Wal Mart saves us a boatload of cash.
I can go fill up a cart with groceries, get a coloring book for Ben, a pair of jeans for Andy and some socks for Shelly and come out of the store having laid out only $200 bucks.
It makes my husband happy every time I come home from shopping and show him the Wal Mart receipts, instead of showing up with three or four bags from the health food store, and trying to hide the receipt because I just spent another three hundred dollars and did not have much to show for it.
It is a balancing act, trying to budget, purchase what I feel is the best food for my family, yet not go overboard with the organic thing.
Sometimes I just can’t afford to purchase everything organic, and it is sometimes difficult to find the cash to even get the extras that make our food storage of beans and grains more fun to eat.
Wal Mart has never paid me a dime for the mentions on my Blog. I don’t accept advertisers right now, and I won’t be bullied into shopping at some PC store like Target because of someone else’s values. (I do shop at Target occasionally if it is where I want to shop – not knocking them) but I won’t be shamed into shopping at any store.
Full and true confessions, I get a peverse delight doing anything that liberals abhore, which is why I can’t wait to purchase our first SUV and use it to drive to Wal Mart, stopping for fries at MacDonalds and dressing my kids in their Nike Shoes.
I believe in Free Market Capitalism.
I say let the market rule.
If Wal Mart has been guilty of bad choices regarding blogosphere useage, they will learn…fast.
The internet has a way of quickly sifting out the fakers….
And if at any time I change my values regarding internet advertising on my Blog, my readers will be the first to know.
And, I will NEVER let an advertiser tell me what I can and cannot say on my blog.
Let Freedom RING!
Jenny Hatch