I am not endorsing or advocating a boycott of Whole Foods.  I am not participating in a boycott of Whole Foods.  I like their store brand milk.  It is the only place hereabouts where one can, on occaision, obtain El Rey milk chocolate.  Most important, it is the only local supplier of the brand of cat food that my aging cats will a) eat and b) not puke up all over the damn place. 

I am, however, for the foreseeable future, determined to cut back drastically on the ridiculous amount of money I've been spending there weekly over the last couple of years.  And, yes, it is because I am immortally pissed at the company's founder and CEO.   

Here's why. 

If Mackey had said this stuff back in January, it might have been different because, iIn January, the possibility of having a reasoned debate on healthcare reform had not yet been totally blown to smitherfuckingreens by the people on his side of the fight. 

Had he said this stuff then, it would have helped if he'd said "okay, I know my customers will disagree with me, but I want to humbly share a few thoughts on health care." And it would have helped if he'd said it in a forum other than the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal.  Had he done that, I would likely have said--as, indeed, I was almost inclined to say when this thing first broke--"okay, he's a libertarian moron, I knew that.  Not an uncommon phenomon among people in the organic food biz, so get over it."   

However, he didn't say it in January, he didn't say it in a guest editorial in the New York Times and he started the whole thing off with a snide quote about socialism from Margaret Thatcher. Then he then moved directly into deficit fearmongering based upon the fundementally dishonest assumption that the deficits we're running now will be recurring rather than being caused by the dip in tax revenues caused by, and the stimulus package necessited by, the recession his Randian co-religionists caused.  

The WSJ news operation is a respectable and respected edifice of journalism.  The editorial page is a stinking, fetid cesspit of mendacity and vitriol annexed to that edifice.  It is one of the most important vectors for the pandemic of lies and dogmatic nonsense that has been poisoning our discourse for the last twenty years.  To go there, of all places, to say things that your liberal customers will disagree with is a lot like the message Reagan sent when he went to Philidelphia, Mississippi to give a speech on states rights.  

Beyond even that, however, I think many of us who are focusing our ire on Mackey are doing so as part of the process of facing up to the ugly reality created by our opponents on the right.  We realize that, on this issue at least, the possibility of rational discourse between left and right no longer exists.  We wanted a rational debate.  We elected a president who campaigned on the principle that we had to start having rational policy debates again.  We fervantly supported him in no small part because we agreed with him on that point. 

And for all that, on this issue, the possibility of rational discourse  is dead, dead, dead.  And no matter how much our tsk-tsking Broderized MSM craves to blame it on both sides, it was the Republicans and their libertarian and corporate allies who killed it.  They made a calculated, decision to kill rational debate on this subject, by any means necessary, solely to serve and perpetuate their own narrow political and economic interests. 

They declared war when we were offering them an olive branch in the rhetorical wars of the last two decades and they announced the start of the war with the rhetorical equivilent of a barrage of poison gas shells that has never ceased.  A barrage that has, if anything, only increased in intensity and fury and toxicity.  They keep lobbing more and more shells into the that hovering cloud of toxic rhetoric they've unleashed over No Man's Land not least because they want to ensure that no one else on their side of the wire can cross over to ours to discuss the resumption of rational discourse. 

At this point, here and now, the reality of the situation is that it is no longer possible for the Right to reinitate rational discussion on health care merely by talking to our side in a rational fashion.  At this point, if Mackey, or anyone else on the other side of the health care fight, wants to have a rational discussion with us, it is incumbent upon them to first denounce the maniacs on their side who are so gleefully poisoning our nation's discourse.  If they want to have a rational discussion with us, they must first tell the people on their own side to cut this shit out.  

Mackey didn't do any of those things.  All he did was utter a few rational, if wrong-headed, thoughts while firing off his own personal barrage of rhetorical mustard gas shells. 

Back after the George W. Bush anti-enforcement SEC closed its file on its investgation of Mackey's comments (under a screen name) about a competitor on Yahoo stock discussion boards, Mackey did a long post on the WF blog.  Here were some of the things he said he had "learned:"

MISTAKE IN JUDGMENT, NOT ETHICS: My mistake here was one of judgment--not ethics. I didn't realize posting under a screen name in an online community such as Yahoo! would be so controversial and would cause so many people to be upset. That was a mistake in judgment on my part and one that I deeply regret because it caused so much negative media attention about me and Whole Foods Market.

BECOMING A PUBLIC FIGURE: Perhaps part of the problem here is that when I first started participating in these Yahoo! online communities back in 1998, Whole Foods Market was only 15 percent as large as we are today. . . I wasn't a public figure and had no desire to become one. However, as Whole Foods Market continued to grow and as we opened large and exciting new stores around the United States, both the company and I became better and better known. At some point in the past 10 years I went from being a relatively unknown person to becoming a public figure. I regret not having the wisdom to recognize this fact until very recently.

***

KEY LEARNINGS: I've learned many things from these events. The primary lesson I've learned is that because of Whole Foods Market's success, I have become a public figure. My personal and work lives are now closely connected--and impact one another. Anything I say or do is now at risk of showing up on the front page of a national daily newspaper and therefore, I need to be much more conscious about the implications of everything that I say or do in all situations.

The price of continuing to be the CEO of a large publicly traded corporation is pouring yourself a big cup of STFU whenever you are tempted to say something that will piss off your customers. It's not a free speech issue, it's a matter of personal choice.  Would I rather have the freedom to say things that will piss off my customers, or would I rather serve my shareholder's interests and, in return, continue to earn huge amounts of money and exercise great power?  Cake.  Eat it.  Pick one.    

Mackey purported to have learned that lesson. 

Whole Foods' entire business model consists of serving an extremely liberal--compared to the demographic of grocery customers in general--customer base. Beyond its product line, Whole Foods deliberately cultvates customers who are politically active and engaged in issues, engaging in many "feel good" activities specifically designed to make shopping at Whole Foods feel ethical and, dare I say it, politically correct.

And yet, despite the lessons he claims to have learned from his misadventures on the Yahoo stock board posting, he went out of his way say stuff that seemed calculated with malice aforethought to offend and anger his company's customers at a time of high emotion. 

And he did it in the one forum short of the New York Post or Fox News most perfectly calculated to enhance their rage.  

However sincere he may, himself, be, he has publicly and wholeheartedly allied himself with people who, in a very real sense, have declared war on democracy itself.  He has said nothing about the continual barrage of lies with which his allies are poisoning our civic culture.  Instead, he added to the pollution  He chose, even went far out of his way, to piss me and the rest of his customers off. 

Well, fuck him.  I am still free to decide how I spend my money and I decline to reward him for spitting in my face.  If the collective effect of similar decisions brings hardship to his suppliers who may agree with me, well, then I'd say they need to let John know he's created a problem. 

Cake.  Eat it.  Even CEO's can can pick one, and only one, John.