Wal-Mart shoppers find Klan cards hidden among books in patriotic display

Associated Press / SFGate

[RCW2001]

Tuesday, August 27, 2002
©2002 Associated Press

URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2002/08/27/national0732EDT0477.DTL

(08-27) 04:32 PDT MUSCLE SHOALS, Ala. (AP) --

Shoppers at a Wal-Mart in Alabama found business cards from the Ku Klux Klan inside books at a patriotic display in the store.

"I was so startled I read it three times," said Mary Meherg, who saw the cards while shopping at the Muscle Shoals store on Monday. "I couldn't believe it."

The cards were tucked inside copies of a book written by Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Dick Cheney, and red, zip-up book covers sold to benefit a nonprofit foundation named for Todd Beamer, one of the heroes on United Airlines Flight 93 last September.

The KKK cards touted a "message of hope and deliverance to America" and solicited a $3 donation to the group for information on helping white children, "America's new minority." The cards listed an Arkansas post office box and the address for an online Klan store.

Officials at the Muscle Shoals Wal-Mart said they previously have found KKK literature in other goods. As in Monday's case, the literature was removed as soon as it was found, store officials said.

"It's definitely not something we want in our store," company spokeswoman Sharon Weber said. "Now that we've learned about it, we need to get them out."

Rebecca Irwin, marketing director for Gregg Gift Co., which makes the book covers for the Todd M. Beamer Foundation, said the company was "shocked and extremely upset to learn that someone is using our product as a vehicle to promote their hate organization."

©2002 Associated Press  

[weegee]

Two wrongs don't make a right. America needs to oppose out the other haters as well.

[Arkinsaw]

That's why I called you on it. It's dead wrong.

There is a big difference between "those who disagree with the liberal agenda" and the people we are talking about. Potstirring wise the people we are talking about have much more in common with certain civil rights organizations than with workaday conservatives. There are similarities in stirring up dumb but symbolic issues simply to get television time and attention and keep funds coming in. In some sense, reverse images of one another.

You yourself are falling into the liberal stereotype that we are all just an amorphous "right wing" all lumped together and are essentially the same. This stereotype is there for a reason. It gives the media great joy for sure when we buy into it and "sorta" defend them because we are "sorta" members of the right wing together "sorta". No, I don't buy that one. They can defend themselves, I really have no stake in doing it as we are quite dissimilar.

[IsItTimeYet]

I hadn't looked at it that way and I can see your point.

I don't disagree with your sentiment so much as I am concerned about its effect. To the liberals, there is no difference or distinction within "our camp" between these hairy-backed, ranting klansmen and an intellegent, reasoned opposition to their ideology. It's all the same beast to them so adding our own venom to the archetype only makes it sting more once it gets applied to us. That's my main complaint with waving signs for the SPLC.