WAL-MART CHIDES EDWARDS OVER PLAYSTATION FLAP

Former Democratic V.P. candidate John Edwards is on the wrong end of a rather pointed press release from Wal-Mart.

The discount department store giant is accusing the former senator, a vocal advocate for the poor and frequent critic of Wal-Mart's low-wage business model, of attempting to use use his position to score a Playstation3 game console from a local Wal-Mart.

Here's a quote from a Wal-Mart press release Thursday:

"Yesterday, a staff person for former Sen. Edwards contacted a Wal-Mart electronics manager in Raleigh, North Carolina to obtain a Sony PlayStation3 on behalf of the Senator's family. Later that night, Sen. Edwards reportedly re-told a homespun story to participants of a United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union-sponsored call about how his son had chided a fellow student for purchasing shoes at Wal-Mart.

Edwards, quoted by the Associated Press, said the whole thing was an error in judgment by an overzealous young volunteer:

"My wife, Elizabeth, wanted to get a Playstation3 for my young children. She mentioned it in front of one of my staff people," Edwards said. "That staff person mentioned it in front of a volunteer who said he would make an effort to get one. He was making an effort to go get one for himself.

"Elizabeth and I knew nothing about this. He feels terrible about this. He made a mistake, and he knows he should not have used my name," Edwards said.

Whatever the case, the far left and right ends of the blog-o-spectrum are having a battle as fierce as any at your local mall on Black Friday.

Righty bloggers are trying to pin a bit of hypocrasy on Edwards, while the lefty bloggers are calling it a smear campaign not unlike the one the following John Kerry's "joke" a couple of weeks ago.