This piece of news bothered me .... what has happened to the human race ... have we become ruthless? Savages? Beasts?
It reminds me of the Wowowee tragedy where hundreds get trampled on for a piece of paper that would spell instant money ... tragic.
This weekend, news reports were full of finger-wagging over the death by trampling of a temporary worker, Jdimytai Damour, at a Wal-Mart store in New York on Friday. His death, the coverage suggested, was a symbol of a broken culture of U.S. consumerism in which people would do anything for a bargain.
The willingness of people to walk over another human being to get at the right price tag raises the question of how they got that way in the first place. But in the search for the usual suspects and parceling of blame, the news media should include themselves.
Just a few days ago, the same newspaper writers and television journalists who are now wearily shaking their heads at the collective bankruptcy of our mass consumer culture were cheering all of it on.
In a day-before story, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution advised readers to leave the children at home, at least the ones not big enough to carry the loot, because they will just slow you down: "Strollers and crowds just don't mix, though we know a few shoppers willing to use four wheels and a child as a weapon. Younger children may also be seduced by the shopping mania and pitch a tantrum that slows your progress. That said, teens and young adults can be an asset to a divide-and-conquer shopping strategy. And you'll have someone to help carry the bags."
An article distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News sounded as if the writers were composing a sonnet for fishing or camping until they got to the punch line: "Nothing rivals the thrill of waking up before the sun, or that sprint through the store for the perfect present."
Another article distributed by the news service said that "some hard-core shoppers will be up before the sun, banging on store windows as the official start of the holiday shopping season begins. Weak economy, pshaw! There are sales out there."
In the wake of death by shopper, Newsday, the daily paper on Long Island, New York, where the event occurred, wrung its hands in the opinion page blog: "Was this deadly rush to lower prices an illustration of the current economic malaise (people mobbing Wal-Mart because they fear they can't afford higher prices elsewhere) or just proof that even a recession can't suppress stuff-lust?"
But beforehand, Newsday offered a "Black Friday blueprint," with store openings listed so shoppers could plot strategy, including a note that at 5 a.m., the Green Acres Wal-Mart would open and customers could expect to buy a 42-inch, or 107-centimeter, LCD television for $598. Many continued to pursue that particular bargain even as Damour lay dying.
The New York Times had a "Black Friday Shopping Survival Guide" on its Gadgetwise blog, but the overall coverage was far from frantic, reflecting grim economic and retail circumstances.
It's convenient to point a crooked finger after the tragedy at some light coverage of harmless family fun. Except the coverage is not so much trite as deeply cynical, an attempt to indoctrinate consumers into believing that they are what they buy and that they should be serious enough about it to leave the family at home.
Media and retail outfits are economic peas in a pod. Part of the reason that the Thanksgiving newspaper and local morning television show are stuffed with soft features about shopping frenzies is that they are stuffed in return with ads from retailers. Yes, Black Friday is a big day for retailers - stores did as much as 13 percent of their holiday business over the past weekend - but it is also a huge day for newspapers and television.
In partnership with retail advertising clients, the news media have worked steadily and systematically to turn Black Friday into a broad cultural event. A decade ago, it was barely in the top 10 shopping days of the year. But once retailers hit on the formula of offering one or two very-low-priced items as loss leaders, media groups began to cover the post-Thanksgiving outing as a kind of consumer sporting event.
"Media outlets have been stride for stride with the retailers," said Marshal Cohen, chief retail analyst for the NPD Group, a market research firm. Speaking on the phone on Friday evening after nearly 24 hours of working the malls, he suggested, "Something like this was bound to happen at some point. The man who died at Wal-Mart was, from what I understand, a temporary employee and had no idea what he was dealing with."
Given that early shoppers stomped him to death and later arrivals streamed past him as he was being treated, he could not be blamed for failing to understand the ungovernable mix of greed and thriftiness that was under way.
