Another good reason to not shop at Wal-Mart

In addition to undermining communities, disrupting the economy, forcing jobs overseas, and treating its employees like scum, there's censorship. From the Boston Globe for Sunday:

When Willie Nelson's reggae cover album "Countryman" (Lost Highway) was released Tuesday, aficionados of country and dub alike rejoiced. ... Some fans, however, may have been perplexed by dubbing of a different sort: Copies of "Countryman" sold at Wal-Mart feature palm trees on the cover in place of the marijuana leaf chosen by Nelson. What gives?

Nothing we haven't seen before. Just last year, Wal-Mart declined to carry comedian Jon Stewart's best-selling America (The Book), because its cover depicted the Supreme Court justices naked. [Actually, the picture wasn't on the cover.] Beginning in the early 1990s, the Bentonville, Ark.-headquartered retail giant stopped carrying the racy lad mags Maxim, FHM, and Stuff; partly obscured the provocative covers of women's magazines like Redbook, Glamour, and Cosmopolitan; and refused to sell CDs or DVDs that bear a parental-warning sticker. Ever since, media and entertainment companies have censored themselves like, as Nelson might say, crazy. Some record labels have even produced Wal-Mart-specific versions of records, in which curse words were dubbed out, and magazine publishers have been known to run forthcoming covers past Wal-Mart execs. This has given rise to a new coinage: Earlier this year, when several phone networks refused to permit their cell phone customers to download pornography and violent video games, critics warned of "the Wal-Martization effect."

At what point does the cost of saving a buck on a three-pack of underpants become too high?