Whole Foods Boycotted by Liberals for CEO’s Anti-Obama Health Care Position
The grocery store Whole Foods is facing a boycott organized by liberal activists because the CEO opposes President Obama’s health care reform proposals. The company’s chief executive, John Mackey, wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed on health care that has roiled the liberal blogosphere and prompted calls for a boycott.
“While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system,” Mackey wrote in the WSJ.
“Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction — toward less government control and more individual empowerment.”
The boycott leaders are organizing via the Huffington Post. “To me, it’s pretty basic: Mackey is working to oppose things I believe in, so I should stop giving him money,” wrote Ben Wyskida, who also works for the liberal magazine, The Nation. In a column titled “Why I’m Done with Whole Foods,” he said: “Mackey has confirmed for me that my money is going to support deregulation of the insurance industry, lies about the current health care proposal, and a crusade to lecture people who can’t access or can’t afford healthy food. I’m just not going to go there.”
Blogger Ethan Nicthern wrote: “I am not going to support his cognitive dissonance on interdependence with any more of my hard-earned local-organic-neo-hippie-spinach money.”
Wyskida also gave links to the other ways liberals are organizing against Whole Foods, including a protest on Facebook and a petition via Care2.com.
And Lila Shapiro, the Huffington Post’s news editor, responded to Mackey’s advice that eating a plant-based, low-fat diet is a prescription for good health. She wrote, “For those of you who are tempted to follow Mackey’s advice (and can afford it!) be warned: not all of the foods found at Whole Foods will actually make you healthy.”
I already shop at Whole Foods several times a week, and all this liberal bashing because the CEO exercised his right of free speech has made me want to go today and buy out all the organic, low-fat, sugar-free, high-fiber, non-PBA, free-range items on the shelves.
