Singer Patti LaBelle is either willfully ignorant or not the principled person she is said to be. First she was the spokeswoman for Premarin, a hormone replacement product that is not only potentially harmful to women, but involves terrible animal abuse in its production. Her latest gig was to appear as a cheerleader for the Wal-Mart corporate team, which is trying to convince its employees to ignore its exploitation of them. Actors Susan Lucci and Halle Berry joined LaBelle in the Wal-Mart gig. Wal-Mart is the subject of a huge gender discrimination suit, as well as charges that it denies disability benefits to employees and ignores their safety.

Of course, these women aren't alone. Every day, we see some famous person endorse a questionable product or endorse a product whose production involves animal abuse, human exploitation, or both. Isabella Rossellini was the Lancombe model for years; Lauren Hutton was the Premarin spokeswoman before LaBelle took the job. And in all fairness to these people, most Americans don't really care who was tortured, killed or abused in the making of their beloved products.

What makes the LaBelle incidents annoying is that the singer is known as a humanitarian. However, for an African American woman to be involved in promoting products and corporations that exploit both African Americans and women isn't exactly humane.