Shouldn't this be in chit-chat?
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Wal-Mart Halts Movie Suggestions on Web
By MARCUS KABEL, Associated Press Writer Fri Jan 6, 6:25 AM ET
Wal-Mart said Thursday it had removed what it called the "offensive combinations" from a walmart.com page advertising a boxed DVD set, "Planet of the Apes: The Complete TV Series."
Under a "similar items" section, the DVD set's page linked shoppers to four films about the lives of King, actress Dorothy Dandridge, boxer Jack Johnson and singer Tina Turner. Wal-Mart later altered the page to link with television show DVDs.
The world's largest retailer said the software that generates links for shoppers from one movie to others of similar interest would be shut down. All cross references would be removed as soon as technically possible until the system can be fixed, Wal-Mart said.
Bill Wertz, a spokesman for the Bentonville, Ark.-based company, said it wasn't yet clear how or when the technical problem arose. "We're still looking into it," he said.
Wal-Mart moved swiftly after a link to the page for "Planet of the Apes" began circulating on the Internet.
"We are heartsick that this happened and are currently doing everything possible to correct the problem," Wal-Mart spokeswoman Mona Williams said in a statement.
"Walmart.com's item mapping process does not work correctly and at this point is mapping seemingly random combinations of titles. We were horrified to discover that some hurtful and offensive combinations are being mapped together," she said, adding that the company was "deeply sorry that this happened."
"To further illustrate the bizarre nature of this technical issue, the site is also mapping movies such as `Home Alone' and `Power Puff Girls' to African-American-themed DVDs," Williams said.
A documentary about surfers, "Riding Giants," links to the same list of seemingly unrelated fantasy films as the King biopic, including "Polar Express" and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."
Shouldn't this be in chit-chat?
El pueblo unido jamás será vencido
It sounds to me like some hacktivist was having a little fun.
O, why should wrath be mute, and fury dumb?
I am no baby, I, that with base prayers
I should repent the evils I have done:
Ten thousand worse than ever yet I did
Would I perform, if I might have my will;
If one good deed in all my life I did,
I do repent it from my very soul.
Act V, Scene III; Titus Andronicus--W. Shakespeare
which fucking idiot moved this thread.
yes it is about social discrimination. however the person who placed it in politics clearly felt that the a story oncerning one of the most powerful corportaions in americ was relevant to general political discussion
we need to decide whether the increasing number of forums is going to mean more or less scope for political expression.
If the new discrimination forum means that people have a new pla ce where they can choose to post threads about racism and sexism etc then fine. If the existence of this forum means that people are no longer allowed to contribute news and ideas about sexism, racism and hoophobia to the general politics forum this is not acceptable. It is not acceptable to cordon off aspects of oppression that many would see as fundamental to politics into this forum
hey thanks, Reuben. i did prefer it to be posted in the politics forum because if anyone is watching Walmart Corp., this is just one of many many offenses they impose on their employees, their customers and the world at large. just about every few weeks or so they do something to antagonise the public or offend and screw their employees. they are the Pat Robertson of corporations. but atleast it didn't end up in chit chat!
http://www.indyweek.com/durham/2002-05-08/news.html
http://walmartwatch.com/
http://factchecker.purpleocean.org/
http://www.1worldcommunication.org/Walmart.htm
http://www.intellectualpoison.com/Wa...sPureEvil.html
Yes, because this was clearly a decision made at the upper echelons of Walmart managment simply because they hate black people. Jesus Christ guys, grow up.
El pueblo unido jamás será vencido
Chit Chat.
<span style=\'font-family:Arial\'>11:18 am, Greenwich Mean Time, December 21, 2012 AD.
"If you're talking about Xvall, I think it is some date when the world is supposed to get sucked into some blackhole or some crazy shit like that." - Fist of Blood
"Einstein was a sick pervert, E=mC2 MY ARSE! pROVE IT U RED SWINE" - Bugalu Shrimp</span>
You see nothing wrong with that or the least bit racist or insensitive in associating The Planet of the Apes movies with biographies of Dorothy Dandridge and Martin Luther King? What was it.. a mistakenly ignorant oversight!!!? Oh, the poor fuckers so ignorant they didn't know...
Come on..... where did they make THAT association from? We know what they mean by that. don't be a lame apologist, Buy our Everything!
Welp, since it's wallmarts website and the similar item recommendations are coming from one of their employees manually putting them in, then Walmart's upper echelon is responsible anyway.
here is another stores(Amazons) Planet of the Apes similiar recommendations.
Soylent Green
2001 - A Space Odyssey
Beneath The Planet Of The Apes
The Omega Man
The Day the Earth Stood Still
The Time Machine
Logan's Run
Ben-Hur (Four-Disc Collector's Edition)
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Escape From the Planet of the Apes
Forbidden Planet
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Psycho (Collector's Edition)
The War of the Worlds (Special Collector's Edition)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)
Predator (Widescreen Collector's Edition)
Jaws (Widescreen 30th Anniversary Edition)
Alien - The Director's Cut (Collector's Edition)
You're stupidity pains and baffles me. I can only ask you why you think the upper management of wallmart would do something so obviously and blatantly offensive to a large segment of their customer base?
El pueblo unido jamás será vencido
Well, geeee,same here. Musts be a placebo effect to keep you from feeling the pains of your own stupidity and naivety.
Still, that is no reason to excuse or defend Walmart for their insiduous and yes! damn right-- obviously and blatantly offensive racism like it was some kind of "ooops" -- faux pax on their part.
Yes, the upper walmart management, the "echelon" is responsible for the The Walmart Corp's public endorsements, marketing stategies, sponsers, advertisers, anything representing the stores, the entity or their employees. if you don't think that too be true, look how fast a lot of these corporate stores dump the martha Stewart line.
It's a Big, big, problem when racism like this is casually and incidentally brushed off like some kind of minor etiquette goof. Obviously, someone delibertly put that in the Walmart databank, where who knows how many countless of people saw it and were offended or degraded by it. Joke or intended racism -- associating black people to Apes is so fucking outrageously vile and repugnant there isn't even words to convey the disgust it should merit. I am utterly surprised and disgusted that there are so many many threads in this forum about pseudo-sexism, and hardly any at all about racism. Racism is the terminal disease in the world --- Abject povery for whole nations of people. Genocide, slavery and brutal oppressions. And it seems to be a real non-issue for the left. Shame. Shame.
Well, be sure to look out for my upcoming, "One Drop - Blood quantum" essay, where we can dig deeper into the mainstream oppression of everyday cultural racism.
You didn't answer my question.
And the reason there's not that many threads here about racism is because this was originally intended to me a gender and sexuality forum.
Really. Care to give an example?
Here. Let me try to explain something to you. See those little google ads at the top of the screen? Ever see them say something stupid like 'End Communism'? Do you think this is a vile scheme by Malte and the administrators of this board to 'end communism'? (I'll give you a hint - no). Same shit.
El pueblo unido jamás será vencido
I did answer your question. Walmart Corp., in the end, and at the top, is responsible for anything that represents their store, no matter what level in the chain of command it is being issued.
don't you understand that?
Pseudo-sexism: example:the Snitza post. 4 pages, 95 responses, to basically a personal problem. analogy: if I wrote a post saying "my boyfriend won't do dishes, and thinks only women should do dishes" is my boyfriend a sexist? yes, mostly likely. Is that a personal problem of mine or a universal sexist problem that affects the whole world? It is a personal problem, thus not political, thus pseudo-sexist. and the main reason i voted against a sexist/gender forum and went with the larger discrimination forum, because I knew those types of posts would be coming up sooner or later.
Google: Google would be responsible for those ads, since it expressly says "Ads by Google." However,,,,,,, apparently, the Walmart website is not using a universal software program that is pre-set and pre-programmed, but is one that they manually put in their own choices of similiar suggested recommendations.
which comes to the MAJOR crux of the problem: Racism: someone sees a similarity between apes and black people and obviously it's someone from Walmarts, which is why they are getting blasted here,--- whoever it was ....employee, manager, perhaps the dead mr. Walmart himself, has manually coded in the racist content so that black people are categorized and insinuated in the same genre as apes. If that isn't a demeaning dehumanizing racist comparison, then nothing else is!!!
hey, Even given the benefit of the doubt by trying to find any kind of correlation, any kind! even the smallest, between race and apes, between black people and apes, (we're talking apes!... within the social context of the original "Planet of the Apes" film--- and still, the chosen recommendations did not anywhere adhere to that.. but instead targeted specific individuals, King, Dandridge, instead of books and films with issues of slavery or racism or even the US civil war. What's the deal?
So, you know,.. that is exactly how racism subtly pervades a society and causes deep rooted social conflicts --- death, discrimination, poverty, segregation, aparthied and oppression.
