“Honestly, Kevin, who gives a crap about your feelings toward Walmart?”
That was Mike Rowe, star of the Discovery Channel series “Dirty Jobs.” He was responding on Facebook to a comment from “Kevin” suggesting, in essence, that he’d joined the Evil Empire by endorsing a Walmart initiative to buy $250 billion in US-made goods over the next 10 years and put them on their shelves.
Kevin had been provoked by an unpaid voiceover Rowe did for a Walmart commercial touting the initiative that aired during the Olympics. He wasn’t the only one.
On his Facebook page Rowe responded, and it strikes us he has his critics pegged. Many, he wrote, are people “who have fallen in love with hating Walmart.”
His foundation, he explains, “supports skilled labor, American manufacturing, entrepreneurial risk, a solid work ethic and personal responsibility. We reward these qualities wherever we find them, whether they’re in David or Goliath.”
Now, we understand concerns about American manufacturing. We’d just add that buying goods from China doesn’t make a business an enemy of the people. In Walmart’s case, it helps make this company a competitive enterprise that employs 1.3 million Americans and saves many more thousands of dollars each year — leaving them more money for their vacations, their children’s education, their homes, etc.
“The world,” Rowe wrote on his page, “is bigger than ‘Workers vs. Bosses,’ and so is this campaign. Remember, Walmart thrives because a majority of Americans like to shop there. . . Ultimately, the customer calls the shots.”
Wise words from a man who has always promoted respect for the American worker.