I’ve known this for years, having once lived very close to Arkansas and watching Bill Clinton’s tenure as Arkansas Governor.

As a Director, Clinton Moved Wal-Mart Board, but Only So Far – New York Times
In 1986, Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart, had a problem. He was under growing pressure from shareholders — and his wife, Helen — to appoint a woman to the company’s 15-member board of directors.

So Mr. Walton turned to a young lawyer who just happened to be married to the governor of Arkansas, where Wal-Mart is based: Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Mrs. Clinton’s six-year tenure as a director of Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest company, remains a little known chapter in her closely scrutinized career. And it is little known for a reason. Mrs. Clinton rarely, if ever, discusses it, leaving her board membership out of her speeches and off her campaign Web site.

Fellow board members and company executives, who have not spoken publicly about her role at Wal-Mart, say Mrs. Clinton used her position to champion personal causes, like the need for more women in management and a comprehensive environmental program, despite being Wal-Mart’s only female director, the youngest and arguably the least experienced in business. On other topics, like Wal-Mart’s vehement anti-unionism, for example, she was largely silent, they said.

What I find interesting here is how hard the NY Times tries to spin this as a positive story on Hillary, imagine if they were doing a story on GW Bush or Dick Cheney having been directors at WalMart and both Bush and Cheney had “remained largely silent” on the issue of anti-unionism.

What is clear from this story is that Hillary was a token female on the Board of Directors who spent her time pushing inconsequential leftist nonsense like “a comprehensive environmental program” for WalMart. Gee, what is funny to me is that I don’t recall the Green movement listing WalMart as one of the great green companies on earth during Hillary’s tenure there. So there is little doubt that she was tolerated on the board as a necessary but ineffectual nod to political correctness, and she made about as much impact on WalMart as a gnat in a windstorm. Which is good, really, who knows what WalMart would be today if Hillary had actually made a difference there.

But what I find very telling, and completely unmentioned, in this article, is how Hillary seemed quite happy to be the token female, whose input was ignored, and who knew her place was not to weigh in on the serious issues that the Board of Directors dealt with, like purchasing as much as possible from overseas, blocking unions from taking hold and building massive superstores all over the country that pushed little mom and pop shops out of business by the droves. On those issues Hillary was silent, but she had no problem picking up her monthly paycheck.

This is the real story of Hillary and WalMart, but if you think you’re going to see it in the mainstream press, you are going to be seriously disappointed.

No wonder Hillary doesn’t talk about it.