Positive News About Wal-Mart?

For all the Wal-Mart bashing that goes on in America today, it was nice to see some positive news (registration required, I think) about the retail giant. Well, mostly positive (more on that later).

According to Tuesday's Washington Post, Wal-Mart has led the way on disaster relief.

Over the next few days, Wal-Mart's response to Katrina -- an unrivaled $20 million in cash donations, 1,500 truckloads of free merchandise, food for 100,000 meals and the promise of a job for every one of its displaced workers -- has turned the chain into an unexpected lifeline for much of the Southeast ...

Though Wal-Mart is sneered at by many, you know that the local Wal-Mart is the lifeblood for many small towns. Beyond their copious donations, I imagine that keeping the stores open in the marginally affected areas may turn out to have just as much of a positive impact. Lots of people can make donations, but not everyone can keep people employed and keep goods and services flowing. Donations do no good if you can't get the stuff to the people who need it or if you get money there and there's nothing to buy. Wal-Mart is doing both -- donating goods and keeping stores open -- and it's doing so much more efficiently than the government:

In Brookhaven, Miss., for example, where Wal-Mart operates a vast distribution center, the company had 45 trucks full of goods loaded and ready for delivery before Katrina made landfall.

Yes, that said Wal-Mart was prepared BEFORE Katrina made landfall. I think the head of Jefferson Parish (N.O. suburb) put it best:

"[if] the American government would have responded like Wal-Mart has responded, we wouldn't be in this crisis."

So, good for Wal-Mart. They're doing good and they're being recognized for it. Everybody wins, right? Well, not so fast. The WaPo reporters wrote this piece praising Wal-Mart, yet they insisted on taking shots at the company. I'll list a few:

... earned it near-universal praise at a time when the company is struggling to burnish its image.

Wal-Mart has much to gain though its conspicuous largesse -- it has hundreds of stores in Gulf Coast states and an image problem across the country ...

The praise comes at a time when the chain faces a series of lawsuits over allegations of wage-and-hour-law violations and gender discrimination.

The same sophisticated supply chain that has turned the company into a widely feared competitor is now viewed as exactly what the waterlogged Gulf Coast needs.

See, here's my problem. I try to avoid Wal-Mart myself simply because I don't like the huge stores and the long lines. I do not, though, begrudge them the right to do something better than others and profit from that. In fact, I view the whole "Wal-Mart is evil" movement as a modern day vindication of Ayn Rand's paranoia. Here, though, Wal-Mart is doing an unqualified good thing. They're making donations, they're delivering donations, they're keeping their stores open. Heck, they've even promised jobs to displaced workers at other stores around the country. They're being a model corporate citizen and they're doing things the government in general and FEMA in particular are not doing. Yet, the WaPo folks can't resist the urge to remind us that Wal-Mart is bad.

Does Wal-Mart have an ulterior motive in giving away water and basic supplies and donating millions of dollars of cash? I DON'T CARE! More importantly, I seriously doubt that folks on the coast care what the motivation is. The relevant point is that Wal-Mart is getting it done better than most anyone right now.

So, just for a day or so, let's all cut Wal-Mart some slack and say, "GOOD JOB, WAL-MART!" Heck, I think I'm going to force myself to go down to the Beltline today and buy some useless plastic trinkets just out of appreciation.

Hat tip to Marginal Revolution for notice of the original story.