one nation under dollar



the patriot’s dream
is to be a martyr for
capitalism.

*
It was the blackest of Fridays for Jdimytai “Jimmy” Damour (and his grieving loved ones):

Emergency workers tried to revive Mr. Damour, a temporary worker hired for the holiday season, at the scene, but he was pronounced dead an hour later at Franklin Hospital Medical Center in Valley Stream.

Four other people, including a 28-year-old woman who was described as eight months pregnant, were treated at the hospital for minor injuries.

Detective Lt. Michael Fleming, who is in charge of the investigation for the Nassau police, said the store lacked adequate security. He called the scene “utter chaos” and said the “crowd was out of control.” As for those who had run over the victim, criminal charges were possible, the lieutenant said. “I’ve heard other people call this an accident, but it is not,” he said. “Certainly it was a foreseeable act.”

Some shoppers who had seen the stampede said they were shocked. One of them, Kimberly Cribbs of Queens, said the crowd had acted like “savages.” Shoppers behaved badly even as the store was being cleared, she recalled.

“When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, ‘I’ve been on line since yesterday morning,’ ” Ms. Cribbs told The Associated Press. “They kept shopping.” (full story)

by howard

November 29th, 2008

  • This Christmas shopping nonsense has been a recurring theme over on my blog. For the sake of a bargain, people camp out overnight and/or stand on line at 4am waiting for stores to open. They lack the ability to stand back and look at themselves for what they have become - retail whores who will sacrifice anything in pursuit of a bargain.
    I think it's time we took the Christ out of Christmas and did something on the legislative level to keep stores from opening before daybreak.
  • Yes, in fact yours is one of the blogs I read via rss (and due to the extra effort it takes to proceed to the actual site, I rarely comment).

    I have so many mixed feelings about Black Friday and the consumer culture in general. I stopped being a Black Friday practitioner about ten years ago. It wasn't with scenes like this in mind, but now I have yet another justification for avoiding all that is Black Friday.
  • bill
    I don't know that leaving Christ in or taking him out of Christmas will have any effect at all, but I've seen few clearer cases for de-commercialization of the holidays than this. However one feels about our economic structure, it's things like this that give capitalism a very bad name. Sadly, it seems like the inevitable outcome when you have a system predicated on greed.

    I'm just glad I've yet to be sucked into the marketing monstrosity that is Black Friday.
  • Ditto on that last bit.

    As far as Christ in or out of Christmas, I think the situation is much more analogous to the money changers in the Temple. It wasn't the Temple, but the way certain people tried to use it to sate their own greed. Same thing with Christmas, I think.
  • “They kept shopping.”
    they were educated thus -
    martyr makers
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