“We won’t comment on the RV tour, since it was a Working Families for Wal-Mart initiative and we didn’t have anything to do with it,” says Wal-Mart spokesman David Tovar.

- Business Week, October 17, 2006.

While Walmartingacrossamerica.com is no more, there is still one incredibly dumb Edelman/Wal-Mart blog going strong out there on the Internet. It’s called Paid Critics, and, if you don’t know it, its purpose is to attack unions opposed to Wal-Mart, in other words, Wal-Mart’s “paid” critics. In the wake of “Jim” and “Laura,” “transparency” has come to “Paid Critics.” Go there now and you’ll see that the post now have authors listed. Two to be exact. Brian and Kate. Click those names and you’ll see that:

Brian McNeill works for Edelman. One of his clients is Working Families for Wal-Mart.

Click Kate’s name and you’ll see essentially the same thing.

When did Edelman sign Working Families for Wal-Mart as a client? Perhaps shortly after it created the organization out of thin air. Does Wal-Mart launder its money through Working Families for Wal-Mart to get to Edelman so it can retain the illusion that these organizations are not one in the same? Why is it if you call Working Families for Wal-Mart on the phone, you get an Edelman employee? Can’t they find any “working families” to answer the phone? While I’m at it, why are paid Edelman employees attacking union employees as “paid critics?” I guess it takes one to know one.

Wal-Mart has constructed the flimsiest of Chinese walls between it and Working Families for Wal-Mart in order to maintain the ridiculous fiction that there are angry working families out there lobbying on Wal-Mart’s behalf when in fact the only people who seem angry that Wal-Mart is being attacked are Wal-Mart spokespeople and paid Edelman employees. Why doesn’t the PR industry have a problem with Edelman enabling this kind of lie? I’m afraid I am going to have to agree with Peregrin Wood at Irregular Times:

The PR industry is out there working on a PR cover-up of this event. In the news and on the blogs now, the dominant headline is “Edelman apologizes”, and PR industry folks are out there, busy writing babble about how they don’t think Edelman or Wal-Mart did anything wrong. They’re saying that the lies were just an “omission”. Oh, how PR-licious of them.

I dare you to prove me and Peregrin wrong, PR people of the blogosphere. Please, prove us wrong.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 18th, 2006 at 0824 by Jonathan Rees and is filed under Blogs, Edelman, Media, Paid Critics, Wal-Marting Across America, Walmart, Working Families For Walmart. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.