Butt And Bum

Charles Butt
President
HEB Grocery Stores
646 South Main Avenue
San Antonio, Texas 78204

Dear Mr. Butt,

Let me first say that I have been a customer of your grocery chain -- almost exclusively -- for the near decade that I have lived in South Texas. Truth be told, y'all are the only game in town, aren't you? Your selection of 65,000 items in most stores can't be beat, and even your store brand generics are delicious! Thank you!

When I first moved here, I was so impressed with the small town feel of your mega-million-dollar chain that I even let my children furnish their playroom with your inflatable HEB chairs. They eat their cereal from an HEB Buddy bowl. We still have your Christmas tree ornament. My children were rooting for Max the Beagle when you conducted your mascot survey and I think my littlest ones are pretty sure that they, alone, picked it.

In this house, you've conditioned us not to say, "I'm stopping at the store," but rather, "Do you need anything from HEB ?"

But, Mr. Butt, you and your store have become a frog in the water. You know the old story: if you place a frog in a pot of cold water and then heat it to boiling, the frog will not notice and will remain until it boils to death. It's a slow, subtle process, but deadly nonetheless.

Mr. Butt, I realize you're a big corporate character and probably do not find yourself in the checkout lane often ever, so I thought I would make you aware of what -- clearly -- nobody else has: your store is trying to expose my young children to soft p0rn.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, in 1964, said that p0rn0graphy may be hard to define, but, "I know it when I see it." I'm afraid that I'm seeing it in your check out lanes. Thankfully, I have been successful in seeing it before my three, innocent, young daughters see it, and I quickly turn the issues around.

Your store managers claim everything from contractual obligations to freedom of speech in defense of the placement of the latest issue of Vanity Fair featuring the Sopranos at the check out -- sans the brown paper cover that it so richly deserves -- on the lowest rack where it meets your smallest customers at almost eye level.

And what do they see? They see an objectified naked woman, baring her exposed bum -- and not just one side, if you understand my meaning -- sitting upon the lap of a fully clothed, seemingly ambivalent man. It's vulgar and disgusting and irresponsible of you on so many levels, my head is ready to explode.

You should be offended at the likelihood that the publisher had long, top-level meetings to discuss this provocative issue, and whether or not they could slip it past your buyers and managers. Shame on you; they did. You've been played.

While you and your organization are not in the least responsible for the careful upbringing of my girls, and while yes, this is a country of free speech (which your behavior in selling such perverse garbage only proves that the very freedom we hold dear will surely be our society's eventual demise) and yes, perverted and civilly-desensitized people might see the cover and think it perfectly acceptable, be sure that it is not.

It is against the law because it is child endangerment. And thankfully, child endangerment still trumps free-speech.

I realize that I can't boss you. It's your store. It's a private enterprise; you have no legal obligation to provide for me. But now that you have been made aware of what your underlings are clearly keeping from you, you have some decisions to make. Will you stand before God and have to explain your love for money and service to manna? Will you be on your face when you realize how you've made His dear children stumble? Will you cry tears before the throne as you are condemned a liar for posing yourself as a family-friendly establishment, but conducted yourself otherwise? Will He say to you, professing Christian, "Depart from me you worker of iniquity! I never knew you."

I pray you will change your ways. But until I see some evidence of it, I will avoid your store while my girls are with me; and since they're almost always with me, I guess I'll be battling the poor parking situation at Walmart more often than I care to.

A Concerned Customer,
Grafted Branch