An interesting, if mildly depressing, exchange on Obamacare.

“Mildly depressing” because apparently J-School doesn’t require much reading of actual, real political theory.

Goodness gracious, but check this out. Background: Whole Foods CEO John Mackey called Obamacare first ‘socialist,’ then ‘fascist,’ then regretted calling it fascist because the Left is generally too ill-educated to understand the difference between National Socialism and economic fascism* -so they were thus all getting hung up in their own ignorance, and thus omitting to address Mackey’s point. Cue CNN Carol Costello, who gave a stunning demonstration of same.

So, once Mackey had dumbed it down again for the nice talking head, we get this exchange:

Costello then asked, “But why inject yourself into the debate over ObamaCare in the first place?”

Mackey responded that he provides health insurance for 73,000 Whole Foods employees and some provisions of Obama’s health care law will raise his company’s costs. “It’s making it more difficult to provide the insurance at affordable rates to our team members, so I’m trying to protect them as well as I can,” he said.

“I think, though, that many of your customers probably wouldn’t agree with you since, I don’t know, you kind of run a store that appeals to the more liberal in America in some ways,” Costello replied.

“I don’t understand what your question or your point is,” Mackey said.

Continue reading An interesting, if mildly depressing, exchange on Obamacare.

Scenes from the Class Struggle at Whole Foods Market*.

Here, Matt Welch cheerfully talks about an enjoyable episode of assumptions-busting with regard to his recent visit to Whole Foods:

After making my purchase with more enthusiasm than usual, I was handed another flyer from some peppy UFCW gals, including the bold-italic question du jour: “Do you really want your shopping dollars going to executives who are undermining President Obama?” One of them asked me (quoting from memory), “Are you aware that Whole Foods CEO John Mackey recently wrote an op-ed attacking national health care?”

“Yes,” I replied with a smile. “I read the whole thing.” As I walked away one of the gals said, in genuine wonder and disappointment, “Wow….”

Of course, Matt was still pumped from seeing the very things from Mackey’s proposal that he would have highlighted being reproduced and disseminated by his political opponents. For free.  Still, the reaction by the union-affiliated ‘grassroots’ protesters was tasty enough, if you’ll pardon the pun, to almost make me go to a Whole Foods and buy something. Continue reading Scenes from the Class Struggle at Whole Foods Market*.