Monday, July 02, 2007

Weird Thoughts On Whole Foods



I visited a Whole Foods store recently and thought about Jonah Goldberg. According to Slate he is working on a book about us Nazis:

Three months ago, I speculated that Jonah Goldberg's forthcoming book, then titled Liberal Fascism: The Totalitarian Temptation From Mussolini to Hillary Clinton, was the victim of a swift and violent paradigm shift. The 2006 elections and the right's critical drubbing of Dinesh D'Souza's The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11—which proposed a strategic alliance between Muslim theocrats and the American right against the degenerate American left—had rendered conservatism's lunatic fringe suddenly unfashionable.

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Gone is The Totalitarian Temptation From Mussolini to Hillary Clinton. Now the subtitle is The Totalitarian Temptation From Hegel to Whole Foods. This is undeniably kinder, gentler, and less political. But it isn't necessarily more truthful. As liberal blogger Ezra Klein points out, John Mackey, founder and chief executive of Whole Foods, is a libertarian.

So what is so very Nazist about Whole Foods? Well, one of the notices said that shoes and shirts must be worn. That is pretty authoritarian, isn't it? I fleetingly wondered if anyone had tested this Nazist rule by wearing nothing but shoes and shirts. Perhaps Goldberg's book will tell us.

Inside the store was a large placard telling me all about how Whole Foods is in cahoots with the local organic growers. That is pretty Nazist, too. On the other hand, I couldn't find very many organically grown fruits or vegetables at the store at all and only one thing grown locally. On the third hand, I did learn why some people call Whole Foods "Whole Paycheck."