Regarding "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices," I wonder what Thomas L. Friedman has to say about this aspect of his wonderful new flat world? Friedman's version of liberalism -- in which he lambastes George W. Bush's policies and then, in the last paragraph, insists how "crucial" it is that they succeed -- leaves me wondering if he or his slap-happily optimistic readers even notice the irony of the phrase "flat world." Perhaps in this day of the Scopes Monkey Trial, Redux, it is necessary to obfuscate everything, lest clarity drive us out of our freaking minds.

Paul A. Toth

Wal-Mart treats women like objects, treats objects like women, and cheap labor like something that can be erased and forgotten only as long as the cheap junk keeps coming in. So long, American Century.

Adam Schenck

I thoroughly enjoyed this week's "Beyond the Multiplex" and will look forward to it Thursdays from now on. I was confused by it previously, instead looking for individual reviews of independent films I was interested in, but today the subhead (and a lull in my work) encouraged me and I feel as satisfied as if I'd just eaten a perfect piece of pie! I especially appreciated Andrew O'Hehir's special combination of candor and sincerity. Thank you, Mr. O'Hehir, and thank you editors. The only bummer is how long I'll have to wait for these movies to come to Austin.

I suppose the neutral response to any criticism of Walmart is that they tend to exploit whatever advantages are out there. It's easy to slip into the normative world of 'decent' wages. But that fails to deal with the fact people in many countries will work for scandalously indecent wages. If the alternative is to starve, then what.

The problem with the Left, the deep ultimate failure, is that they can't come to grips with any kind of economic reality. You'd have to sort out each element in the critique. Yes, it's wrong to abuse the zoning process. It's not like they are alone here. It's wrong that lower wage people don't have health care. I'm not sure any company, even GM or Boeing or IBM, can provide it. So, who will? They come in and destroy the local jobs. Yeah, along with Home Depot, Taco Bell, Target, 7-11, whoever. I live in a small town where Walmart and the Depot dominate. I wouldn't say the workers were so much better off before. Do you want a small elite running things, or Walmart? Sort of a mixed bag. It depends on whether you are in a small, economically depressed area where Walmart comes in and upgrades things, or a rich, elite suburb. Doesn't it?

How do you solve the ultimate conundrum of a global labor marketplace? There are people who will work for a lot less. They will take our jobs. Walmart is not the process. Walmart is the thing to which you ascribe the processs. How do we get the world to sustainable and relatively equal wealth?

Get rid of Walmart and what changes? The problem with attacking Walmart is that you simply bundle everything that is economically challenging into Walmart and suggest if it is punctured, or lanced, everything will be... better? All better?

What problem do you want to solve? Say... first?

... which not only galvanized a nascent gay community -- no such thing really existed before the Stonewall uprising in 1969 ...

This is a shocking historical claim. In reality, there were well-developed gay communities in most major urban areas well before World War II. The MacCarthy years pushed some of them underground, but they didn't dissolve away, they were simply invisible to most of the public. Stonewall, while deeply important to the New York community's efforts to overthrow the oppression of mafia-owned bars and police raids, was in its time simply one more act of resistance. The convenient and specious lynch-pin of Stonewall belies the vibrant, active, fun, sexy, resistant and politically dilligent gay communities which preceded it.

There was a lot of important information in the movie, but it was interspersed with pointless scenes of one-sided phone conversations about nothing, off-topic footage of chinese discos, cringe-worthy all-caps text statements overlaying paused film and accompanied by that 'case-closed' sound from The People's Court, and far too many clips of the CEO of WalMart spouting propaganda. What crap. After the 4th of 5th time you hear Lee Scott blatantly lie, you get it - he's a lying jerk. No need to repeat the scenario 15 more times. I spent 20% of the film learning something, 20% rubbing my temples or cringing, and 60% thinking about how much they could have improved their film with simple editing and creative display of information.

An example:

They flash the fact that WalMart spent 18 billion dollars in China last year. But who really has a good concept of what 18B means? It would have been more meaningful to say "18B, almost 10% of all Chinese exports to the U.S.", or "18B, 60% of all WalMart products", or both. Without context, you know it's a lot of money, but not really how much. They also play an ad from WalMart with actors saying how proud they are that WalMart buys American. The problem is that the commercial is obviously dated - probably at least 10 years old judging by the perms and unironic mullets the actors wear - and WalMart really did buy mostly American back then. In 1995, only 6% of the merchandise was imported. There is no need to mislead viewers like this when there is plenty of good information with which to sink WalMart.

After the movie, a friend said it was a "hatchet job...by which I mean that it looked like it was edited with a hatchet." I thought it looked more like a very ambitious second-year film school project.

For a much better look at the evils of WalMart, watch the Frontline piece "Is WalMart good for America?":

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walmart/view/