Isley Brothers – "Fight the Power (Part 1 & 2)" (1975)

I tried talking about it

I got the big runaround . . .

We got to fight the powers that be!

Here’s a query I recently received from a loyal 2 or 3 lines reader:

The grocery store where I usually shop recently sent me an e-mail that said I could get up to $75 off my groceries if I transferred my prescriptions to that store’s pharmacy.  I jumped on the offer.  

The pharmacist there didn’t know what I needed to do to get my $75 off, so I called the grocery store’s customer service number.

The customer service rep told me that I wasn’t eligible for the advertised discount because I was a Medicare recipient, and the offer didn’t apply to beneficiaries of government programs such as Medicare or Medicaid.

The signs in the store promising the $75 discount said nothing about Medicare recipients not being eligible for the offer.  

I did a little research, and learned that approximately 40% of all the prescriptions filled in this country are for Medicare and Medicaid recipients.  That’s a lot.  

The $75 offer was also subject to a number of other conditions.  (For example, you weren’t eligible if you had filled a prescription at the store in the previous 12 months.)

Put it all together, and I’m guessing that at least half the people who were sent the e-mail offering the $75 discount weren’t eligible for it.  

Shouldn’t the company have disclosed that there were significant limitations on the offer?  If I had known I wasn’t going to get the $75 off, I wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of transferring my prescriptions.  I’m sure the grocery store is going to make a lot of profit of my prescriptions, but I’m not getting doodly-squat for my trouble.

Taking the company to court obviously isn’t worth it given that only $75 is involved.  And sending a complaint to a government agency would probably be a total waste of time.

I always use the self-checkout machines at that store, so I could simply help myself to something every time I visit that store until I’ve gotten my $75 worth of food.

I’m guessing that would be technically illegal.  But do you think it would be wrong?  

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Some of you may not know that before I became a wildly successful blogger, I was a wildly successful lawyer.  So I was able to confirm to my loyal reader that walking out of a grocery store with food you haven’t paid for is illegal, and would subject him to prosecution for shoplifting.  (That’s assuming that law enforcement where he lives gives a you-know-what about shoplifting, a crime that seems to be completely ignored in many places.)

As for whether it would be wrong to get even with the company for its deceptive advertising by simply taking the $75 worth of free food he was promised, that’s a very different matter.  I was trained as a lawyer – not as a moral philosopher – and have no special qualifications to opine on issues of right and wrong.

What I will say is that it has long been my belief that some things that are illegal are not necessarily wrong – and that some things that are perfectly legal are still wrong.

Further affiant sayeth naught.

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The six men who recorded as “The Isley Brothers” were brothers O’Kelly, Rudolph, Ronald, Ernie, and Marvin Isley and Rudolph’s brother-in-law, Chris Jasper – but I guess it would have been awkward if they had called themselves “The Isley Brothers and an Isley Brother-in-Law.”

“Fight the Power (Part 1 & 2)” was released in 1975 on there group’s thirteenth studio album, The Heat Is On.  It was a huge hit for the Isleys, occupying the top spot on the Billboard R&B chart for three weeks and making it all the way to #4 on the “Hot 100” chart.

The other tracks on The Heat Is On album include “For the Love of You (Part 1 & 2),” “Sensuality (Part 1 & 2),” “Make Me Say It Again Girl (Part 1 & 2)” . . . well, you get the picture.

Click here to listen to “Fight the Power (Part 1 & 2).”

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