Everyone has heard by now about the Long Island Wal-Mart employee trampled to death during the Black Friday consumer surge. Here at home, the local paper had photos of shoppers charging through the front door of a small town Wal-Mart as the doors opened at 4:30 am, and a picture of tents set up outside a Best Buy, where shoppers spent the night in near-freezing temperatures to be first in line Friday morning.
How did America program people to be this desperate to go shopping? I remember in the early eighties when we reporters first began telling people – incorrectly, as it turned out – that the day after Thanksgiving was the busiest shopping day of the year. By the time that urban myth got straightened out, Black Friday had been elevated to some sort of national observance, far surpassing the first pitch of the baseball season and even many legal holidays.
I buy more stuff than I should, but even I can't fathom this overwrought worship of loss leaders and bait-and-switches.
I try to visualize how these kinds of stories play overseas, where we've tried to present ourselves as the world's moral leader. A person trampled to death by shoppers? A tent city of people desperate for a big-screen TV? This is the kind of stuff that makes the rest of the world think we're all just materialistic consumer zombies.
6 comments:
Worship is the word, isn't it? When I heard this story the first thing I thought of was stories of people being trampled to death as part of religious pilgrimages. Is shopping our religion?
OTOH in England it happens at soccer matches...
And I do think some of it is for fun, not out of desperation for deals. At some Best Buys people camped for several DAYS. Like they did it just to do it.
Me, I don't get it at all. Last place I want to be is a crowded store at 4 in the morning.
It's been awhile since anyone slammed this blog.
Typo. That was supposed to be 'spammed.
it's not just the WalMart guy who got trampled, it's also the two guys who killed each other in a Toys R Us gunbattle that started when their female companions got into a slap fight inside the store.
And, the shit these yahoos are lining up to buy? Rubber fish that "sing", video games about mass killings or grand theft auto whores and mayhem, and those oh so outre sports chairs Mathis Bros. is promoting. YUK!
Jesus would be so proud.
blogblah
This actually horrified me and I thought I was cynical. It makes me queasy to think someone lost their life because of greed--oh, wait a minute, all those Iraqis and others we've killed over getting Haliburton more oil deals--yeah, that's right, and the children starved in Dafur, and how about the. . .I'm gettin' queasier. But to die letting people into a Walmart. That's martyrdom. People buying crap, absolute crap, made in China--sending their hard earned money to Chinese businessmen. I have to go now and rant for a couple of months--and cry.
Soarstar
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