Apparently, in addition to holding mandatory meetings with employees to tell them not to vote for then Democratic Presidential Nominee Barack Obama, Wal-Mart also instructed employees in some stores not to speak his name.

We're not sure what the political purpose was of this move, other than potentially creating a bad feeling among employees. It seems unlikely that many people in the nation wouldn't have heard Barack Obama's name at some point during the campaign.

According to the Clarion Register, a Mississippi paper,

Wal-Mart, in response to reports that it had banned employees from speaking Obama's name while at work, said it is discouraging its employees from engaging in certain political discourse on the job.

"One of the basic beliefs of our company is respect for the individual," Wal-Mart corporate spokeswoman Ashley Hardie said in an e-mail statement.

"We are a bipartisan company and our associates reflect the wide range of attitudes and political diversity of this country. We prefer to maintain a politically neutral working and shopping environment in our stores," Hardie said. "As such politically charged discussions are discouraged in order to ensure individual beliefs are respected."

Sure, it makes sense for an employer to stay away from political endorsements or having its employees campaigning on the job. But if their end goal was discouraging their employees from alienating customers by espousing a different political view, why didn't they ask employees not to discuss the presidential election while on the job? Why, instead, did they ban their employees from using Barack Obama's name? And why didn't they ban John McCain's name? Oh, and if they truly were "bipartisan" and wanted to avoid alienating customers, why did they hold mandatory meetings where they told employees not to vote for Barack Obama?