the death of daily candy

Earlier in August, Daily Candy sent out its second dedicated, Wal*Mart-sponsored piece of candy. Most all of us know that Daily Candy has made a name for itself by alerting culture and style-sensitive consumers to cool, up and coming stuff that it had discovered in and around key cities via pithy, well-written daily email updates. As time passed, DC began to also issue "dedicated emails", paid for by advertisers and therefore inherently wiffing of not-coolness.

I understand that a website has to make $, and this writer thinks that Daily Candy handled the incorporation of dedicated emails into the mix very well (it alerted all of us users in its listserve via email). But, Wal*Mart? Doesn't Daily Candy have some sort of filter, by which they can weed out potential sponsors by degree of their ubiquity? I feel that both parties- DC and WM- lost in the deal. WM looks even more like a nouveau rich kid who tries to buy his more stylish and savvy friends who are shopping at target while DC appears to be selling out to "the man" versus supporting the underdog shops who need the support the most. With this said, I do realize that not a lot of moms can afford to do back to school shopping at precious little boutiques. But how many of them need a reminder about Wal*Mart existing? DC as an advertising aperture for this marketing giant just doesn't seem to fit.