I’m not begrudging Alice Walton her inherited wealth. What I am begrudging are her priorities. Walton has the influence to help Wal-Mart workers, especially women, earn more money and gain access to affordable health care. But her response so far to the needs of the people whose sweat pays for her paintings is a simple one: Let them eat art.
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-from “Wal-Mart Heiress’s Art Museum a Moral Blight” by Jeffrey Goldberg, whose sleuthing has uncovered the world’s first cultural institution bankrolled by wealth gained at the expense of working people.
To me, it’s a perennial truth that Wal-Mart should treat workers much much much better. What grates here is stuff like Goldberg writing both that he’s “not begrudging Alice Walton her inherited wealth” and that the “Waltons are rich because they own about half of Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart has made them rich in part because it pays its workers as little as possible.”
Well, why wouldn’t you begrudge someone inherited wealth that came from paying workers as little as possible? You would. You should. You should begrudge the hell out of that.
But Goldberg doesn’t begrudge. Or says he doesn’t. Why? Because he’s playing rhetorical games, being cute — the same kind of cute that flings “Let them eat art” at a billion-dollar museum where admission is neither MoMA’s $22.50 nor the Art Institute of Chicago’s $18 but rather this:
Q. What is the admission price?
A. General admission to Crystal Bridges is sponsored by Walmart. There is no cost to view Museum permanent collections.
Fault Alice Walton for the cars she drives. Fault her for the homes she owns. Fault her for the thread count of her pillowcase. Go ahead and fault her for not using her “influence to help Wal-Mart workers, especially women, earn more money and gain access to affordable health care.” You can fault her for all of that on any day of any week of any year without needing to indict her on charges of creating a place where people in the upper left-hand corner of Arkansas can come and see world-class art for free.
(via davidquigg)
