… but enough about me

I am gleeful that Wal-Mart is not opening a store in Manhattan. And I love the way it’s been reported, too: New York thumbs its nose at the behemoth retailer, and Wal-Mart’s all like: “Oh yeah? Well… I hope your babies look like … monkeys!“

In the great pissing contest that is Life in Manhattan, Wal-Mart lost. And their CEO, H. Lee Scott Jr., comes off looking like a sore loser, staging a meeting with the New York Times to ensure maximum exposure when he said Screw you, New York!

“I don’t care if we are ever here,” he said. “It’s too hard to make money here.”

Wal-Mart decided that conducting business in New York is too expensive and exasperating and would not be worth the effort.

Maybe the way they make money won’t work here. Plenty of other retailers, e.g., Costco, Target, seem to thrive. Hmm…

Wal-Mart has been vigorously opposed in urban settings for a long time by labor unions and community groups. Unions and don’t want them here, because of their unfair labor practices and because their low wages will disadvantage the unionized stores already here.

I love the labor response: “We don’t care if they’re never here,” said Ed Ott, executive director of the NYC Central Labor Council, in the New York Times. “We don’t miss them. We have great supermarkets and great retail outlets in New York. We don’t need Wal-Mart.”

I know I don’t.

I love The Onion. [onion.com]