Incertus

It isn't like this is the first time doors have opened in a department store and people have rushed through. It is, however, the first time someone was killed, I think.

As hard as I try to blame Wal-Mart, I can't.

Look, they have to do business and they have to have sales on Black Friday. They have to open the doors at some point. I say it's up to the customers to act like human beings. Or shouldn't we expect that? Shouldn't we expect that consideration for our fellow man's comfort, maybe even his life, should play some part in our behavior? Shouldn't we expect that our lives are worth more to each other than a 50% discount on a flatscreen TV?

"Desperation" for Coach bags? "Desperation" for plasmas? Puhleese, Brian. Let's save the desperation for food, water and basic shelter.

I have a word for "desperation" for everything else:

Greed.

.

The people at the Brandsmart at Sawgrass Mills didn't crush anyone--why? Because Brandsmart had security and limited the number of people who could get in. I think there have been enough examples of people being crushed in mad rushes at both stores and other venues that Wal-Mart should have been prepared for this.

But I think you missed my larger point, which is that while Wal-Mart isn't solely to blame for the current "gottahaveitnow" attitude that leads to this sort of stuff, they're a good symbol for it, and they're the leading commercial face representing it.

Compare it to the laws that deal with inciting a riot. If a person gets a crowd riled up to such anger that the crowd turns into a mob and harms someone, the person doing the inciting can be held legally and financially responsible. Wal-Mart (and other companies) has, over the years, riled up consumers for the mad dash on Black Friday. Don't they bear a large chunk of the responsibility when something bad happens as a result?

I can't go with you on your analogy, Brian. All Wal-Mart is saying is "We're having a big sale, come buy our stuff." They're not out there "inciting" people to do something illegal.

Next you're going to say that people who drive 130 mph on an empty I-75 can sue the State after they run their car into an abutment because there were'nt any troopers around at the time.

People have to be held responsible for their actions unless it can be shown that there was gross negligence involved. Is it negligent to open your doors for business to sell merchandise that's deeply discounted?

I don't know.

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What if the state created an impetus for people to drive -- reverse gas day! the more gas you burn, the more money we'll give you! -- and then didn't choose to put any more cops on the street. Maybe even they effed with a few streetlights to create massive jam-ups that would make people wait for hours, getting more and more tense with each passing moment, and then, simultaneously: every light is green!! :-) Would the state's hands be clean of all the resulting accidents and deaths?

To further Amy's point-a 'door buster' sale isn't just, "We have some good prices, it's what it says it is-a door buster sale. No rainchecks, no week long prices, it's four hours get it before it's gone bust down the door sale.

You're not supposed to get that tv - they sell ten tvs at a loss to the ten most savage shoppers to get 30,000 shoppers ready to spend left to buy stuff to make up the loss on those ten door buster tvs.

This isn't 'hey, save a dime on a TV,' this is incitement to elbows and if a store hasn't prepared for the conditions they actively create they share the blame when people act the way they wanted them to.

One of the frightening things is how much retail relies on the holidays. There will never be a 'war on christmas' because our economy is built on it, and as long as it is, this Friday will keep getting blacker.

Brandsmart is hardly the respectable business to cite when bashing Walmart.

I once purchased a video camera there and they wouldn't let me return it a week later, even though I was going to purchase another model for just as much.

I just didn't want the one I had because there is no software that edits AVCHD without having to convert it, which is a pain in the ass.

Any other store, including Walmart, would have returned it within 30 days.

I will never set foot in Brandsmart again.

That you care about the crass commercialization of our culture and what it's doing to us all clearly makes you a Stalinist.

That you laugh at that notion & those few morons & partisan nutbags who promote such an idea only further proves that you're a commie.

Obviously.

I read elsewhere that some rightwing ass on CNN said "Get used to this folks. These are the kind of people that liberalism has created. After four years of Obama and the food , power shortages, and gas shortages that will be engineered by the marxists in order to take down this country, this kind of thing will become routine."

Another brilliant mind.

Back here in the real world, everyone who allows themselves to be manipulated into shopping on Black Friday--let alone at midnight, or 3am, or even 5am--is to blame. Every store who doesn't care enough about their employees to allow them a proper Thanksgiving holiday, or about maintaining order in the chaos they create is to blame. In a climate where the most patriotic thing one can do after a terrorist attack is "go shopping," tragedies like this are bound to happen.

Every year I become more sure that these folks have the right idea. Buy Nothing Day

My first job out of college was working for a credit card authorization company so I always had to work Black Friday. Because of that antipathy I had to endure every year, I still avoid it like the plague and sat peacefully in my home yesterday watching the horror unfold in New York. I wonder what the people who were in that mob are thinking today? At the very least, they are all guilty of involuntary manslaughter. How will they be able to spend the rest of their lives knowing that a man died because of their greed?

I just don't get it.

--->Susan

Here's a new Wal-Mart Christmas Carol you may like....

http://www.kilroycafe.com/songs/walmart/wal-mart-christmas-carol.txt