Minnesota and Vermont have designated grocery store workers emergency personnel, making them eligible for free child care. While we rightly praise health-care personnel, grocery workers come into contact with hundreds of people a day, and most shoppers aren’t staying six feet away from their cashier. My brother’s job brings him into several of them in Southeastern Pennsylvania daily, and he says that while rural stores are pretty well-stocked, urban stores look like “World War Z,” with some people snatching products out of other shoppers’ hands.
Joe Strummer’s song isn’t about panic buying but the emptiness of consumer culture. He said he wrote the tune, which is sung by Mick Jones, by imagining Jones’ upbringing in a basement flat with his mother and grandmother.
The Afghan Whigs gave the song a new spin on a Clash tribute album.
