Conservative Switch Board

ABC smells racism behind Walmart’s price cutting of black barbie dolls.

Walmart is raising eyebrows after cutting the price of a black Barbie doll to nearly half of that of the doll’s white counterpart at one store and possibly others.

…”To prepare for (s)pring inventory, a number of items are marked for clearance, ” spokeswoman Melissa O’Brien said in an e-mail. “… Both are great dolls. The red price sticker indicates that this particular doll was on clearance when the photo was taken, and though both dolls were priced the same to start, one was marked down due to its lower sales to hopefully increase purchase from customers.”

“Pricing like items differently is a part of inventory management in retailing,” O’Brien said.

But critics say Walmart should have been more sensitive in its pricing choice.

“The implication of the lowering of the price is that’s devaluing the black doll,” said Thelma Dye, the executive director of the Northside Center for Child Development, a Harlem, N.Y. organization founded by pioneering psychologists and segregation researchers Kenneth B. Clark and Marnie Phipps Clark.

This is so dumb.  Goods are priced based on sales.  The price of the doll with the lower number of sales was cut so that sales would pick up.

ABC is scraping the bottom of the barrel here.  It isn’t necessarily surprising that they were able to find so many race-obsessed “critics” to spout such nonsense.  The race mongering industry is thriving, after all.

But this is a clear case of starting from a conclusion (raaaaaacism), and finding a story to fit it.  Just imagine, for instance, if the price differential had been reversed.  What is black barbie cost more?

Why, that would be racist against black barbie, too.  Rather than being “devauled,” ABC would find “critics” to argue that Walmart was trying to hurt sales of black barbie and keep it out of the hands of poorer black customers.

This is agenda journalism, plain and simple.

Hat-tip: Right Wing News

The Congress Elementary School District in Arizona is tired of having to comply with open record laws, or deal with pesky residents that want to know what they’re doing.  The school district is now suing four residents on the basis that their lawful requests amount to “harassment.” No kidding:

The Congress Elementary School District claims that past efforts by these residents to obtain documents such as minutes of board meetings and spending reports amount to harassment that should not have to be tolerated.

But Jean Warren, one of the four defendants named in the lawsuit filed January 28, 2010, said the complaint is an illegal attempt to silence citizens who have questioned the district’s policies and spending practices.

The lawsuit says the defendants filed over 100 public records requests since 2002.  That’s barely 10 a year.  It then hyperventilates that it is contrary to the “public interest” to comply with the requests “filed by the Defendants on an almost daily basis.”

One hundred requests since 2002 is an almost daily basis?  No wonder kids can’t count.  They are being taught by morons – thuggish, tyrannical morons who think they have a right to lord it over children and parents alike without ever being questioned.