Whole Foods feels the wrath of the yuppies

Here is the best lesson one could ever have in explaining the true mindset of today's sophisticated yuppie progressive liberal:

"Dear Store Manager," a member of the Boycott Whole Foods Facebook group wrote, "The 30 risotto cakes that I purchased from Jenkintown Whole Foods, last Friday, were scrumptious. But today they are giving me indigestion of the soul as I realize that my money may have funded the demise of the public option in the nation's health care reform legislative debate."

This is what Whole Foods gets for building a major retail business around this crowd. John Mackey, the CEO, caters to their assumptions about organic foods and free-range chickens. He indulges their nonsensical whims on everything from "fair trade" coffee to paper-not-plastic to New Age herbal tea and whatever else they're willing to pay too much for. Yet all that did was confirm in the minds of his liberal customers that they truly are the anointed. They are the ones who "care," unlike those slobs who buy their bologna and American cheese and Wonder bread at the Wal-Mart. By shopping at Whole Foods, they weren't just buying organically grown lentils and grass-fed Kobe beef -- they were buying confirmation of their own inherent moral superiority.

Then Mackey did a bad, bad thing. He wrote an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal expressing his personal view on the debate over health care reform and proposing ideas that he feels would "lower costs for everyone" and not require a "massive new health care entitlement." Eight bullet points. Several of them good ideas. And yet, in the minds of many of his liberal customers, and despite the Obama White House call for a civil and substantive debate, Mackey crossed a line. To make those sins even more egregious, he uttered this anathema:

Our Canadian and British employees express their benefit preferences very clearly—they want supplemental health-care dollars that they can control and spend themselves without permission from their governments. Why would they want such additional health-care benefit dollars if they already have an "intrinsic right to health care"? The answer is clear—no such right truly exists in either Canada or the U.K.—or in any other country.

So now comes the backlash, along with the inevitable apologies. Whole Foods sent letters to customers "apologizing for any offense" and created a forum on its website to discuss the issue, which has drawn more than 10,000 posts (compared with 77 posts on the raw foods thread).

Think for a moment about the sense of entitlement someone must have in order to become outraged over that WSJ column. It would be one thing to simply disagree with Mackey's point of view, and write a letter to the editor to express one's opinion. That's not what happened here. These people are so emotionally invested in Whole Foods and what it represents to them that they actually feel betrayed because its CEO expressed his own personal opinion in favor of a reasonable alternative to government-run health care.

Naturally, the leftie blogs went off on him. From TPM:

Here's a thought: If you own a major supermarket chain that caters to a great deal of liberal-minded people with money, don't rail against the evils of health care reform in the Wall Street Journal.

Note that Mackey never "railed against the evils" of anything. He never even came close. At most, one could take away that Mackey feels government-run health care is, on the whole, unwise. A fair reader would find his rhetoric quite reasonable and his arguments marshaled in a logical and highly civil manner. He began by acknowledging that health care is a serious issue -- and touched on the ticking time bomb of Medicare and Social Security, an angle that the Democrats conveniently ignore -- then offered market-based alternatives to ObamaCare. Again, he did not write a column blasting ObamaCare, although clearly the Left views it that way. He wrote a column giving constructive alternatives. But that doesn't matter. The message the leftie blogs repeated over and over again is that Mackey should have been aware of his customers' political leanings, implying that he should therefore restrain his speech accordingly and never, ever publicly express a contrary opinion.

In offering an alternative, and in the course of supporting of his arguments, he challenged the basic, underlying assumptions of government-run health care -- in particular, the idea that there exists an affirmative "right" to health care, and all that that implies. As it turns out his customers, although they presume otherwise of themselves, do not like having their beliefs challenged at such a philosophical level.

These are people who had been dead certain that anyone who shopped at Whole Foods (naturally including the person running the company) must obviously be of like mind, and therefore in lock step with liberal orthodoxy (and gifted with inherent moral superiority). So after reading the Wall Street Journal article, the response was not to generate a counter-argument in favor of government-run health care entitlements, the response was "let's get on Facebook and boycott his business, and then we will force him to back down and agree with us."

This is the mindset from which the progressive operates. If they buy risotto cakes from you, they own you, and they brook no dissent.

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P.S. Football posts will return when there's something to write about. I hate the exhibition season so much. And there's nothing much coming out of the college camps except injuries.