Sunday, August 23, 2009

I Will Never Spend Another Dime in Whole Foods

http://www.dangerousminds.net/index.php/site/comments/why_i_will_never_spend_another_dollar_in_whole_foods/

Why I Will Never Spend Another Dime in Whole Foods
08.14.2009
Richard Metzger
Tags:
Republicans
Whole Foods Boycott of 2009
John Mackey

Not a nickel or penny for that matter. Nothing. Ever again.

I was absolutely incensed by Whole Foods CEO John Mackey’s editorial against universal health care that appeared in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal. In a classic example of a smug, rich guy doing the “I got mine, buddy, go get your own” routine, Ayn Rand-loving, Internet-trolling asshat Mackey actually has the nerve to suggest that instead of universal health care, people simply eat organic food bought at Whole Foods. You know, an apple a day keeps the doctor away. As yesterday’s TPM headline read “Who Needs Healthcare? We’ve Got Whole Foods!”

Is this a joke? A ridiculous misguided publicity stunt where we still haven’t heard the punch line? Fodder for a future South Park episode? Not to get all Al Goldstein on you Mackey, but FUCK YOU. And to the WSJ editorial editors, for shame that you let something this blatantly RIDICULOUS appear on the pages of a supposedly respectable newspaper. It’s an embarrassment, like giving Marie Antoinette (or Betty Crocker) editorial space to declare “Let them eat cake” and then argue the point!

What a creep! But that’s not to say that something good might not come of this mortifying episode. Like a boycott of the most over-priced supermarket chain in history!

A woman named Mieke Eerkins sent out the following letter on Facebook, which I am excerpting here with her permission:

Subject: Whole Foods- Shocking News

I wanted to share this with my more liberal friends who probably shop at Whole Foods, and hope you’ll pass it on if you agree with me. I am shocked and disappointed to learn that Whole Foods Market’s company position is in opposition to health care reform, and in general, supports Republican ideologies. Apparently, for years now (as he admits), the CEO has been posting right-wing rhetoric in newspapers under a pseudonym, but yesterday, he published an op-ed piece openly under his real name that is pretty extreme right-wing on health care reform. The CEO’s statement in the Wall Street Journal is in direct opposition to what I thought they believed in, and certainly in opposition to the beliefs of many of their customers (including me). I had no idea he supported a Republican ideology! How can a store that pretends to be in favor of healthy living turn around and say that only some privileged people deserve access to health?

The Whole Foods CEO’s exact words: “Many promoters of health-care reform believe that people have an intrinsic ethical right to health care—to equal access to doctors, medicines and hospitals…A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter. That’s because there isn’t any. This “right” has never existed in America.”

I think many people (like myself) assumed Whole Foods had a whole different ideology. Many people (like me until now) have no idea that they are supporting a right-wing ideology by shopping at Whole Foods. Well, I am done. I am not paying to feed a right-wing agenda.

I would urge you, if you disagree with Whole Foods’ CEO John Mackey’s Republican ideology, to stop shopping there and let the store know why.

I at least wanted you to be aware, as I had no idea until today what I have been implicitly supporting by shopping there.
Well put Mieke!

PLEASE CUT AND PASTE THIS INTO AN EMAIL AND FORWARD TO YOUR FRIENDS

1 comment:

Paul said...

Back in 2008, this Whole Foods, CEO John Mackey (how old is this kid?), was caught posting negative comments (trash talk) about a competitor on Yahoo Finance message boards in an effort to push down the stock price. So now I am suppose to take this loser seriously? Please, snore, snore.

It’s funny we hear Republicans say that they do not want “faceless bureaucrats” making medical decisions but they have no problem with “private sector” “faceless bureaucrats” daily declining medical coverage and financially ruining good hard working people (honestly where can they go with a pre-condition). And who says that the “private sector” is always right, do we forget failures like Long-Term Capital, WorldCom, Global Crossing, Enron, Tyco, AIG and Lehman Brothers. Of course the federal government will destroy heathcare by getting involved, Oh but wait, Medicare and Medicaid and our military men and women and the Senate and Congress get the best heathcare in the world, and oh, that’s right, its run by our federal government. I can understand why some may think that the federal government will fail, if you look at the past eight years as a current history, with failures like the financial meltdown and Katrina but the facts is they can and if we support them they will succeed.

How does shouting down to stop the conversation of the healthcare debate at town hall meetings, endears them to anyone. Especially when the organizations that are telling them where to go and what to do and say are Republicans political operatives, not real grassroots. How does shouting someone down or chasing them out like a “lynch mob” advanced the debate, it does not. So I think the American people will see through all of this and know, like the teabagger, the birthers, these lynch mobs types AKA “screamers” are just the same, people who have to resort to these tactics because they have no leadership to articulate what they real want. It’s easy to pickup a bus load of people who hate, and that’s all I been seeing, they hate and can’t debate. Too bad.