“It’s a bankruptcy of mammoth proportions. Thousands of people could see their life savings wiped out, hundreds of thousands will feel the pain, and tens of millions will have their lives seriously affected.”

“Of course,” David Brooks quips in The Weekly Standard, “I’m talking about Kmart’s decision to file Chapter 11.”

In “Requiem for a Blue Light,” Brooks argues that, while the Enron story is “interesting,” it is but “a story of the corrupting influence of gonzo management consultants such as Tom Peters and Gary Hamel.” The Kmart story, on the other hand,

[…] gets short shrift because . . . well, because it’s about Kmart. National reporters tend not to shop at Kmart (though if Crate & Barrel ever went under, big national papers would run with black borders for weeks). The bankruptcy of Kmart is seen as a business story, but not a cultural story–not something to be debated and discussed.

That’s too bad, because Kmart is about the rise and triumph of theming. Stores can’t just sell things any more, they have to have a theme. This is not news at the upper end, but it is relatively novel among discount stores. Kmart’s rivals have themes, or personalities.

Wal-Mart doesn’t just have low prices. The brand relentlessly cultivates a small-town image. It’s a company that comes in and arguably destroys small-city downtowns, but it is so successful at branding itself as an emblem of rural Red America that people don’t regard it as a corporate behemoth. Its headquarters is in rural America. Every store reaches out to local volunteer fire departments and such. Its advertisements are deliberately hokey, featuring “just us folks” sales staff.

Target, of course, is the peppy, high-sensibility store–the place where the cast of “Friends” would shop if they really didn’t have any money. Target has an ironic corporate mascot, that ugly red dog with the red target around his eye. It has high-sensibility appliances. I was in a Target yesterday buying a coffee machine and I had to wade through some Michael Graves-designed models–which I really wanted at first–until I realized the plain old $19.95 Mr. Coffee 12-cup maker was right for me. People who shop at Target love calling it Tar-jay, with a French accent. They’re upscale-sensibility people with downscale budgets.

Kmart, by contrast, exudes nothing.

Hey, I like Kmart. Not only is there a store two minutes down the road from my house, but I absolutely despise the bigger of its two major competitors (I won’t name names, but it rhymes with “Tall-Cart”) — a chain to specializing in manipulative small-town hokiness and politically motivated pharmaceudical stocking practices. Target’s okay, but I have to drive about twenty minutes to get the closest store.

Please, Kmart, get yourself a decent mascot and get your act together. I’m addicted to $20 tennis shoes and $8 blouses…

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