Thursday, May 21, 2009

Wal-Mart vs. Green Day (Go Wal-Mart!)

Kudo's to Wal-Mart for not selling the new Green Day album (which has vulgarity and other adult content).

Wal-Mart's music purchasing policy has always been that they'll not sell an album that requires a parental advisory sticker. They'll allow artists to sell a modified version of the album (with adult content removed) in Wal-Mart stores, but not the original content.

Apparently Green Day doesn't like this policy, and is blathering on about "censorship". I don't see it as censorship (if, that is, censorship is defined as "repressing speech, art or any other form of communication"). It's not repressing, it's simply Wal-Mart applying a standard to the products that they choose to sell. Green Day is still free to make the album, sing the songs, and sell the album anywhere else that'll carry it.

Would Green Day be angry at me if I disallowed my daughter from buying their CD? Would that be repression?

At any rate, I'm proud of Wal-Mart, and you should be too. I urge you, take a few moments and sent an email note to the folks over at Wal-Mart, at questions@checkoutblog.com, congratulating them for their high standards!

2 comments:

Jed said...

PJ

I do agree with your point and think that Green Day has missed the mark. However I think they would also say that Walmart is limiting the experience of their shoppers and would be better serving the customer if they sold what people wanted; regardless of their personal corporate policy. ON a side note I think you would actually agree with many of their political views... as long as the language was cleaned up.

PJ said...

I think the point is that Wal-Mart IS providing what their customers want. At least what many of their customers want.

If some customer has a desperate need to listen to Green Day utter every vulgarity known to man to a screaming guitar and banging drums, they can hop down to the local music store or jump on iTunes and buy the "EXPLICIT" version. No harm, no foul.

But the truth of the matter is, if I ever DO buy a Green Day album, it will ONLY be from Wal-Mart, because I'm not interested in buying one with a Parental Advisory sticker on it.

So Green Day should thank Wal-Mart: they're broadening Green Day's demographic!