Wal-Mart is America’s largest retailer and is really, really very big. Apparently some stores are bigger than small British shopping malls (mega-Wal-Marts are the size of five football pitches. American football or soccer - that’s big).

It also represents a fascinating focal point for discussion about values and standards, freedom of speech and the over-arching of corporations to impose their own will on a country’s culture. It appears that Wal-Mart, a company with family-based values and a conservative outlook, has a prominent affect on all these.

Wal-Mart is known for several practises. Even I have heard accusations that it pays low salaries and provides poor health benefits to its staff. I also am aware that the family heading the company is a committed Christian one. And I am aware also that Wal-Mart makes its own decisions on whether items are family-friendly - and it will not sell those it regards as contrary to its own value system.

Take, for example, Wal-Mart’s refusal to sell Sheryl Crow’s self-titled album in 1996, citing objections to a lyric that criticized Wal-Mart for selling handguns (a practice that the chain has since discontinued), which they felt was “unfair and irresponsible.” Much as Crow probably appreciated the paternalistic advice, as the No. 1 CD retailer in the world (yes, the world) with sales accounting for 10% of total domestic CD sales, a Wal-Mart boycott can result in hundreds of thousands in lost album sales.

Music producers sometimes produce two versions of their albums - the original and the Wal-Mart friendly version - in order to get round the company’s embargo:

Wal-Mart’s official statement on music is as follows: “Wal-Mart will not stock music with parental guidance stickers. While Wal-Mart sets high standards, it would not be possible to eliminate every image, word or topic that an individual might find objectionable. And the goal is not to eliminate the need for parents to review the merchandise their children buy. The policy simply helps eliminate the most objectionable material from Wal-Mart’s shelves.”

Wal-Mart avoids stocking books that contain nudity or religious imagery it disapproves of. It may also be refusing to sell items that are not in accordance with the owners’ political leanings:

…the political bias inherent in Wal-Mart’s criteria became clearer when Wal-Mart’s merchandiser for films found Robert Greenwald’s acclaimed documentary, “Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War,” (produced with the support of the Center for American Progress) “inappropriate for Wal-Mart.” For no conceivable reason could a documentary involving no gratuitous violence, expletives, or sex be inappropriate, other than its criticism of a conservative political administration.

Wal-Mart protestations that such items are not wanted by their customers are difficult to substantiate when they ban products that, sold elsewhere, are hugely popular. And some bans seem quite odd:

Even something as potentially broadly appealing, positive, and utterly non-offensive as a T-shirt reading “Someday a woman will be president” was pulled from the sales floor because “the message goes against Wal-Mart family values.” So old school patriarchy and sexism are Wal-Mart values? Seems a little retrograde and moot in the age of “take your daughter to work day.”

Wal-Mart’s Christian outlook may make it an ideal place to sell pro-Christian products:

The crown jewel of Wal-Mart’s commercial triumph is the dystopic end of days series Left Behind. As reported in the New York Times, Tyndale House, publisher of the Left Behind series, credits Wal-Mart with a pivotal role in turning the evangelical thriller “Armageddon” (No. 11 in the Left Behind series) into the best-selling novel in the country. As Melani McAllister wrote in The Nation, “these novels work [because] they seamlessly integrate an apocalyptic religious view with a strongly conservative political vision, and locate both in a universe of supernatural action adventure in which good and evil are fully and finally revealed.”

The tenor of the article I’m quoting from is, unmistakably, anti-Wal-Mart. But the question is: What exactly is Wal-Mart doing that is wrong?

How wrong is it, for example, for the company to pick and choose what it stocks? Isn’t that what any company does? It strikes me that some of its choices - if the article I’m quoting from is accurate - are a little petty. But being petty’s never been a crime and a company that will sacrifice profit for principle is very rare indeed.

I would not question the right of Wal-Mart to sell - or not sell - what it chooses. Nor would I question the right of people to object, protest and, even, try to arrange a boycott of the company. But legislative interference with Wal-Mart’s legitimate activity, carried out within law and objected to only because of its strident bias would be wrong.

The only legitimate interference in the company’s activity would be to protect the greater good - in terms of social or environmental well-being. And the ‘right’ to buy a Sheryl Crow CD doesn’t come into it.