Off the top of my head, I can think of many many reasons to boycott Walmart:
- Walmart discriminates against female workers (hence, the class action lawsuit)
- Walmart discriminates against minorities (hence, the class action lawsuit)
- Walmart employs illegal immigrants, which is against the law
- Walmart mistreats its immigrant workers, which is against decency
- Walmart pays crap wages (the average salary for an associate is BELOW the poverty line)
- Walmart fails to provide health care to many of its workers (which means they receive MediCare, which you pay for)
- Walmart busts unions
- Walmart hurts small businesses and hurts local economies
- Walmart outsources to non-American companies (China, mostly)
- Walmart is the poster boy for urban blight (not to mention rural blight)
- Walmart violates many environmental laws
- Walmart gets away with this shit by being heavy GOP contributors
- Walmart insists on having a hyphen (or worse, a star) in the middle of its name, which I reject
But the dumbest reason to boycott Walmart is because — I’m not making this up — it has "banned Christmas".
That’s right. According to WorldNutDaily, some Catholic advocacy group wants to boycott Walmart because it has in effect "banned Christmas" while promoting Kwanzaa and Hanukkah.
Even a cursory glance at the evidence shows that the real problem for the conservative Christians is not that Christmas has been "banned" by Walmart. (And why would Walmart — Walmart of all places — want to ban Christmas??)
What the religious bigots truly hate is the promotion of Kwanzaa and Hanukkah.
To these religious bigots, it’s either all-Christmas or nothing. And if you promote holidays from other religions along with Christmas, then, yes, Christianity is being "persecuted".
Check this out. The leader of the boycott movement is a man named Bill Donahue, from the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights (website).
He points out, and WND [WorldNetDaily] confirmed, that when using the company’s [Walmart’s] online search engine, if the world "Hanukkah" is entered, 200 items for sale are returned. The term "Kwanzaa" yields 77. But when "Christmas" is entered, the message returned says: "We’ve brought you to our ‘Holiday’ page based on your search."
Absolutely correct. Try it yourself by following the links above.
The number of Walmart items for sale for "Christmas" are so large, that rather than list them all, Walmart sets up and entire webpage section (see screen capture above), where it is further subdivided by the type of product (Christmas wreaths, lawn decor, ornaments, stockings, gift baskets, etc.).
Still, if you tally up all the Christmas items for sale at Walmart through a secondary link, you get 7,970 "Christmas" items.
So let’s recap:
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77 = Kwanzaa-related items for sale at Walmart
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200 = Hanukkah-related items for sale at Walmart
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7,970 = Christmas-related items for sale at Walmart
Response from the Catholic League:
"Wal-Mart is practicing discrimination," Donohue maintains.
Ooookay. If you say so. Fortunately, Donahue elaborates more at the Catholic League website:
Searches for Hanukkah and Kwanzaa direct customers to the Jewish and African-American holiday sections, but searches for Christmas are directed to the ‘Holiday’ section. Ergo, Wal-Mart discriminates in its treatment of Christmas.
Um . . . no, Mr. Donahue. There is no Hannukah and Kwanzaa "section". There is merely a sprawling search result list, like what you get when you do a Google search. In fact, Walmart treats Christmas BETTER, because unlike Kwanzaa and Hanukkah, it has its own special "holiday" section.
But logic and fact sure doesn’t stop Bill "Hollywood Likes Anal Sex" Donahue from making an ass of himself. Merry Xmas, jerk.