grief to anger

Wal-Mart has a really poignant commercial going around. There’s a cuter-than-necessary-but-sufficiently-bedraggled kid sitting at a lunch table at school, looking forlorn, lonely and awkward because he doesn’t have a lunch (been there). But luckily, his friend sneaks him an orange, which gives him a break into the lunch-table trading system, allowing him to eat [insert economic metaphorical commentary here – made doubly ironic by the fact that it’s a commercial for Wal-Mart].

This commercial really gets me – I tear up every time. It’s a beautiful piece of work. And then I see that it’s an ad for Wal-Mart, and it quickly mutates into a slightly disgusted form of rage.

I assume the part of the commercial they don’t show is where the kid goes home, hoping to ask his mom why the hell he didn’t have a lunch to eat, but she’s nowhere to be found, since she’s busy busting her ass on an unscheduled shift, even though she didn’t get shit last week, but hey, them’s the breaks.

Let the anti-pro Wal-Mart debate begin.