Wal-Mart, the Movie

On LaMarotte this morning I present some sober thoughts on the recently decided discrimination case against Wal-Mart. Writing that post my irreverent impulses produced the outlines of a plot, science fiction, to be sure (the science here being Economics): Wal-Mart, the Movie. What I had in mind was something along the lines of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington—and this being SF, why couldn’t time-travelling James Stewart arrive in 2011 for a guest appearance in our time in Wal-Mart, the Movie? Innocent but big-hearted Jimmy, a stock-clerk at Wal-Mart, starts the huge ball rolling when he listens to Wolf Blitzer on CNN announcing the Supreme Court’s decision on Wal-Mart Stores Inc. v. Dukes et al. He starts organizing, first his mother, then his sisters. From tiny beginnings outward spreads the greatest ever boycott of Wal-Mart. First a few women, at one store, Jimmy Stewart’s own, then many but still not all, refuse to buy anything at all, at every Wal-Mart. There are hold-outs, but eventually, around every Wal-Mart in America, masses of women—and a few sensitive men, as well, of course—surround the stores. At the same time—a few, then all, women who work for Wal-Mart quit—one of them being an extremely fetching VP of Finance at the very store where Jimmy works—a woman whom the stock clerk secretly loves (established early in the movie, while Jimmy still struggles against doubts, fearing to lose his job). Fetching VP joins the protest. She gives it her all, working with Jimmy little shoulder to his big, in events that reach from small to national heights. And in the end of course, when Wal-Mart stores are everywhere empty, indeed being attacked with sledge hammers and front-end loaders by suddenly muscular but still sensitive males in hard hats, the blessed denouement arrives, and ex-VP of Finance is in the arms of ex-stock clerk of Wal-Mart, stream of tears running down their faces as they breathlessly kiss each other while the crowd—it’s all of us, folks, all of America—give a mighty cheer.

And after watching that movie, we all feel much better about things. As we did back in 1939 as well when Jimmy first, as Mr. Smith, did his number on us.