{"id":3195,"date":"2004-12-14T10:28:08","date_gmt":"2004-12-14T15:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3195.html"},"modified":"2004-12-14T10:28:08","modified_gmt":"2004-12-14T15:28:08","slug":"sometimes-its-hard-to-know-whom-to-root-against","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/sometimes-its-hard-to-know-whom-to-root-against\/","title":{"rendered":"Sometimes, it’s hard to know whom to root against"},"content":{"rendered":"

I know this<\/a> isn’t an obvious political story, but it’s a fun one with entertaining angles.<\/p>\n

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which promotes itself as a seller of clean music, deceived customers by stocking compact discs by the rock group Evanescence that contain the f-word, a lawsuit claims. <\/p>\n

The hit group’s latest CD and DVD, “Anywhere But Home,” don’t carry parental advisory labels alerting potential buyers to the obscenity. If they did, Wal-Mart wouldn’t carry them, according to the retailer’s policy. <\/p>\n

But the lawsuit claims Wal-Mart knew about the explicit lyrics in the song, “Thoughtless,” because it censored the word in a free sample available on its Web site and in its stores. <\/p>\n

The complaint, filed Thursday in Washington County Circuit Court, seeks an order requiring Wal-Mart to either censor or remove the music from its Maryland stores. It also seeks damages of up to $74,500 for each of the thousands of people who bought the music at Wal-Marts in Maryland.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Is it me, or does this little controversy open up a variety of opportunities for mockery?
\n
\nFirst, you know the culture war has taken some bizarre twists when the pro-censorship crowd goes after pro-censorship Wal-Mart. As Carpetbagger regular Fitz emailed me to say:<\/p>\n

“[Wal-Mart] jumped on the pander-to-fundamentalists bandwagon along with the GOP. And, like the GOP, are learning the hard way that fundamentalists do not see the world in color, or even shades of gray.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Good point. Wal-Mart is supposed to be as red-state as Fox News, but even the anti-union, pro-slave labor behemoth can’t escape the far-right’s wrath when it comes to a CD with a “dirty” word on it.<\/p>\n

Second, this might put conservatives’ ire over frivolous lawsuits to an unexpected test. Everyone who bought a popular album is entitled to $75 grand? Because listeners might have heard the f-word? What a bind for the far-right: Conservatives hate lawsuits, love Wal-Mart, and loathe rock albums with profanity. Will the tort-reform crowd ever embrace this as an example of a litigious culture run amok?<\/p>\n

It’s quite a conundrum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know this isn’t an obvious political story, but it’s a fun one with entertaining angles. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which promotes itself as a seller of clean music, deceived customers by stocking compact discs by the rock group Evanescence that contain the f-word, a lawsuit claims. The hit group’s latest CD and DVD, “Anywhere But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}