Wal-Mart issued a release last week reporting on its own annual meeting, where CEO Lee Scott said that Wal-Mart has benefited in the marketplace from its recent focus on solving social problems.

Five years ago, Wal-Mart was saying, essentially: "If we take care of our customer by giving low, low prices, everything else will take care of itself. So leave us alone." Now, Wal-Mart is saying it’s going to help take care of social problems its customers face; it’s set ambitious goals to help reform U.S. healthcare and achieve environmental sustainability.

A pretty amazing shift, even considering it was inspired by an unbelievable torrent of bad publicity over the last few years, in which the press portrayed Lee Scott as a robber baron and Wal-Mart as a monopoly. Finally the biggest company in the world is acknowledging that it must consider the effect it has on the societies in which it operates.

But big companies are like big drunks: They over-correct, and they sway dangerously. Get a load of this, from the Wal-Mart press release:

Scott
   also talked about the company’s efforts to help solve some of the toughest challenges facing its customers, such as rising
   energy prices and high out-of-pocket health care costs. He said that American voters who will be the focus of the upcoming
   elections are Wal-Mart shoppers who are concerned about these very issues.

"We see it in our stores every day—working
   men and women living paycheck to paycheck and making more and more difficult decisions," Scott said. "We serve millions of
   customers like this every week in the U.S. We understand them."

The company’s chief executive added: "Regardless of
   who wins the election in November—and what party they are from—we stand ready to work with the new President and the
   next Congress. We believe we can be an effective partner, and leaders who want to get things done will seek Wal-Mart as a
   partner."

Woah, hold on there big fella. Five years ago you wanted to be left alone with your efficient supply chain. Now you’re publicly stating that the road to social reform runs through Wal-Mart?

Needed in America: Someone with a sober vision of how companies large and small should participate in public policy. How they should help, how much they should help—and when they should step off. Has anybody ever seen such a vision articulated? I’d like to see it if you have.

Those old so-and-so’s

Ladies, I’m sure by now you’ve learned not to trust a man who would tell you what pigs other men are.

But I’m half woman. For instance, I can’t talk about carburetor exhaust ports for more than 15 seconds without gazing off to reflect on the ritual of such gadget-talk among men, and wonder whether it’s really not as “deep” as talk of emotions (and what, really, is “deep” anyway?).

Of course, I’m also half man, so I’m as sexist as the next fellow. Today it occurred to me as I went grocery-store-searching for just the right kind of fucking brillo-sponge that I often wish I lived in an age when even good husbands didn’t have to worry about sponges.

My woman half is outraged by the sexism on display in this video, and my man half is naively surprised by it.

https://writing-boots.com/2008/06/those-old-so-an/

It’s easy for a writer with many years between now and retirement to look in horror at the current scene: Newspapers folding, great reporters being laid off—and all this infernal talk about changing publishing models. Please, spare me that shit. I’d rather die of starvation than boredom.

Here in Chicago, the struggling Tribune has been taken over by a windbag real estate magnate who appears to know little and care less about journalism and writing. The management goons he has put in place—like management goons everywhere—talk about the newspaper like it’s a blank slate with a brand name. Let’s turn the Chicago Tribune into MySpace!

A newspaper is not a blank slate to Rick Kogan, Trib writer and son of legendary Chicago newspaperman Herman Kogan. To Rick, who now finds himself something of an elder statesman in Chicago journalism, a newspaper is a life. (A life he has always generously tried to help eager writers into. As a favor to a friend of mine who was trying to help me break into Chicago journalism, Kogan once took me to the Billy Goat, bought me three highballs in 40 minutes, gave me five story ideas and promised me he’d introduce me to the right editor to pitch them to.)

In a column by local media writer Mike Miner, Kogan acknowledges that he doesn’t know how to fix the Trib so it makes money again. "I don’t know anything about video or the Internet," he says.

But to Tribune management, he says, "Whatever way you guys go, don’t forget it’s all about the word."

And to publishers everywhere, Kogan adds: "It’s hard not to be seduced by the new. But I will argue forever that to think of words as the old is crazy."

When I begin to succumb to worry, I reassure myself by remembering that scribes have been around since caves have had walls, and that if I’m a good enough scribe I’ll be around as long as I want to be. (Which, of course, is all the security a writer has a right to ask for.)

Readers, what comforts you in the middle of this writer’s night?