Un-American to bash Wal-Mart?

On the L.A. Times op-ed page today, the National Review's Jay Nordlinger reacts to the Inglewood vote against Wal-Mart with a big kiss for Sam and friends. Along the way, he suggests that Wal-Mart is somehow the real America, and that its critics are somehow less so.

Frankly, more than a little snobbery goes into Wal-Mart bashing. This is a store that sells every product under the sun at low, low prices to ordinary folks. Wal-Mart is gloriously, unashamedly, star-spangledly American. I hope it's not too McCarthyite to suggest that those who despise Wal-Mart are the very ones who may not be so crazy about the United States tout court.

Kevin Drum at Political Animal guffaws at that, writing: "Don't you just love conservatives?...it's a good sign of a bankrupt argument and a bankrupt movement when even a disagreement over payscales in a retail store descends into rote accusations of anti-Americanism. Unfortunately, this has become so commonplace that it's no longer fair to call this kind of demagoguery McCarthyism. That's unfair to McCarthyites." His commenters (61 and counting) seem to find the chain's link to Communist Chinese cheap labor ironic, given the flag waving and stuff.