Dead on Black Friday, A Damned Holiday Shame

UPDATE, 12/3/08: Trampled Man's Family Sues Wal-Mart

You know, sometimes I feel that America gets what it deserves.

I'm no Karma guru, but I've long felt that you get back what you put out and a nation whose culture is so obsessed with having "stuff" is destined to have problems like our current economic debacle.

But when America actually becomes so hell-bent on the day-after-Thanksgiving sale, traditionally known in retail circles as "Black Friday" that we actually kill a man so that we can get that new iPod or flat screen TV, then we deserve an economic depression.

I'm not pissed at all of America, just the bird-brain shoppers who broke the doors down at a Valley Stream, NY Walmart to get in as it opened, and trampled 34-year-old Jdimypai Damour, a store worker, to death.

What's worse, nobody even stopped to help him as he lay on the floor in his last moments.

Instead, the $199 XBox was more important than a man's life. ...

Reportedly, as they tried to clear the area and get some type of order, customers complained about having stood in line all night, having little regard to what they had wrought. Man, talk about heartless...I could probably get more love wearing a dashiki at a Klan cross burning.

As a testament to Walmart's insane corporate thoughtlessness, and the ignorance of their management instead of closing the store down -- at least for half a day -- and risk losing a single dollar, they simply held people back behind a police line until the greenlight was given for the greedy bastards to spend, spend, spend. Frankly, I hope the dead man's family, as well as a 28-year-old pregnant woman who was also injured, sue Wal-Mart for every penny they make this holiday season. It is disgusting that retail stores let people hoard at their doors like packs of ravenous wolves waiting to fight over crap they don't even need.

If you were in the crowd responsible for this tragedy and you wind up reading this, I hope whatever you purchased breaks, malfunctions or gets ruined in some way. Your brand new flannel sheet set or DVD player was not worth this man's life. Of course you had no idea things would come to this, but why in the hell would you literally break a door down to get into a store with more inventory than you can count?

As for Walmart, Sam Walton's bastardization of free market capitalism, I would like nothing more than to see them face legal consequences for inciting this tragedy.

I'll probably do my Christmas shopping online this year, it's quicker, more efficient, and clearly less deadly.

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