iowa underground blog

Thanks to TH1974 for first bringing this story to my attention here.

The guy with the Sinatra karaoke side ‘career’ also likes parroting the propaganda of Wal-Mart and passing it off as his own.

You can read the NYT story here.

A few excerpts follow:

Wal-Mart Enlists Bloggers in P.R. Campaign

Brian Pickrell, a blogger, recently posted a note on his Web site attacking state legislation that would force Wal-Mart Stores to spend more on employee health insurance. “All across the country, newspaper editorial boards — no great friends of business — are ripping the bills,” he wrote.

It was the kind of pro-Wal-Mart comment the giant retailer might write itself. And, in fact, it did.

Several sentences in Mr. Pickrell’s Jan. 20 posting — and others from different days — are identical to those written by an employee at one of Wal-Mart’s public relations firms and distributed by e-mail to bloggers.

Did you know Wal-Mart is more selective than Harvard? It’s true!

Mr. Pickrell, the 37-year-old who runs the Iowa Voice blog, said he began receiving updates from Wal-Mart in January. Like Mr. Beller, of Crazy Politico, Mr. Pickrell had criticized the Maryland legislature over its health care law before Wal-Mart contacted him.

Since then, he has written at least three postings that contain language identical to sentences in e-mail from Mr. Manson. In one, which Mr. Pickrell attributed to a “reader,” he reported that Wal-Mart was about to announce that a store in Illinois received 25,000 applications for 325 jobs. “That’s a 1.3 percent acceptance rate,” the message read. “Consider this: Harvard University (undergraduate) accepts 11 percent of applicants. The Navy Seals accept 5 percent of applicants.”

Asked in a telephone interview about the resemblance of his postings to Mr. Manson’s, Mr. Pickrell said: “I probably cut and paste a little bit and I should not have,” adding that “I try to write my posting in my own words.”

Let’s hope this guy doesn’t truly represent the voice of Iowa:

Mr. Pickrell, explaining his support for Wal-Mart, said he shops there regularly and is impressed with how his mother-in-law, a Wal-Mart employee, is treated. “They go real out of their way for their people,” he said.

If he does, it will be many years before the world stops laughing at us.

You can read more on how Wal-Mart goes ‘real out of their way for their people’ at Wal-Mart Watch.

• tristero

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 7th, 2006 at 7:54 am and is filed under Iowa, Corporations. 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.