Jeffrey Goldberg (yes, that Jeffrey Goldberg) absolutely flays Walmart heir Alice Walton (one of the six Walmart heirs who in 2007 had as much wealth as the bottom 30 percent of the population), who has used her $21 billion fortune to found the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Calling Crystal Bridges an "aesthetic success" but a "moral tragedy," which "I suspect...is also the only building associated with Wal-Mart that is devoted solely to American-made goods," Goldberg contrasts the values portrayed in some of the museum's classic paintings with those spread by Walmart:
Then there is Norman Rockwell’s oil-on-canvas “Rosie the Riveter,” the iconic symbol of World War II U.S. industrial power. “Rosie the Riveter” is described by Crystal Bridges as a “transcendent symbol” of the “capabilities, strength and determination” of American women.
This is the sort of description that should give Alice Walton pause. After all, Wal-Mart’s female employees are not nearly so celebrated. In fact, one study shows that Wal-Mart’s female employees are paid less on average than their male counterparts, and are less likely to be promoted to management.
Looking at Rockwell’s painting, my mind wandered back to a woman I once interviewed, an employee of a Wal-Mart in Martinsburg, West Virginia, who was living in her car, in the Wal-Mart parking lot. This isn’t an unknown phenomenon among Wal-Mart’s nearly 1.4 million U.S. workers, who earn, on average, $8.81 an hour, according to Ibis World, a research company.
It's a powerful rebuke, but Alice Walton lives her disregard for that suffering every day. Her family's fortune and by extension her museum owe their existence to the race to the bottom that Walmart by now epitomizes. If she gave a single shred of a damn about any of the damage created by the corporation her father founded, the world would already know. She just doesn't care.