First Casualty Of Christmas
November 28, 2008
Sadly, what was an old joke has become real life.
Before police shut down the store, eager shoppers streamed past emergency crews as they worked furiously to save the store clerk’s life.
- Joe Gould, (NY) Daily News
18 Comments
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It is good that one die so that many can be saved.
It is a tragic and real representation of this culture: Death.
It’s good to be free, isn’t it?
They hate us because we’re free.
Is this what was meant by that phrase I heard so much in the midle of this sad decade: freedom on the march?
It is a tragic and real representation of this culture: Death.
Invoking the “culture of death” here seems going a big far. The tragedy seems much mor attributable to consumerism, or perhaps to difficult economic times when people are desperate to save money. One also wonders at the advertising policies that induce crowds of people to form a mob at 5:00 a.m. so eager to get into the store that they break the doors down, and at the safety and security policies of the store. Did they have a plan for letting the people in the store in an orderly manner? Did they attempt to set up barricades and have a line?
This same kind of thing happens with religious pilgrims, who frequently get trampled to death by the hundreds, and it happens in crowded stadiums occasionally.
In my opinion, this has nothing to do with the “culture of death” and a lot to do with mob behavior and poor crowd control.
This is another example of liberals trying to talk about workplace safety as if it is a life issue like abortion. Wal Mart clerks are not innocent babies.
This is another example of liberals trying to talk about workplace safety as if it is a life issue like abortion. Wal Mart clerks are not innocent babies.
!
Dear God I hope that was satire, Kurt.
It’s the culture of “Would you like fries with that ?” All you can eat & shop till you drop. Eat crap at Home Town Buffet, buy crap at Wal-Mart. I had the unfortunate task of going to Wal-Mart for cat litter today (ie, buying stuff for crap). People are so freakin’ fat it’s no wonder that someone gets trampled by a stampede. In Europe, the ugly fat American is proverbial.Of course, there a much greater percentage of people smoke, so it’s heart attack vs. lung cancer. I don’t even know anyone who smokes here.
One nation under lard, with roll down prices and french fries for all.
Dear God I hope that was satire, Kurt.
It was. What is sad that we have come to the point that there would be doubt.
Thank God. You never know anymore, and you’re right, it’s sad..
“Invoking the “culture of death” here seems going a big far. The tragedy seems much mor attributable to consumerism…”
If consumerism isn’t a cultural phenomenon, then, I guess it does go too far. However, I think it has to get rolled into the same group of things that create such a dehumanized – and therefore deathly – culture.
However, I think it has to get rolled into the same group of things that create such a dehumanized – and therefore deathly – culture.
This seems to me to be stretching the meaning of culture of death to include everything you think is wrong with America.
How is it that people from the pro-life movement, which is largely from the political right, can be so hypercritical of the United States, and yet the right itself responds to any American self-criticism as hating America or “blaming America first”? It seems schizophrenic.
I agree, for the most part, with the sentiment of your second paragraph as I understand it. But I have no clue whether it was meant to be a part of our discussion.
As for the comment that I am “stretching the meaning of culture of death to include everything you think is wrong with America.” I think you underestimate the power of consumerism and its ancillary cultural manifestation. The idea here is that consumerism has built an instant gratifying and dehumanizing culture that can be seen in action in this horrible case or in other cases like the inconvenience of a child, an old person, a poor person, and so on. I think the symptoms here are not to be disguised as some kind of logistics error. You see, the people we mad with comsumeritis and what made them that way, well, there is a whole litany of things. You put it all together and you get a culture of death. That is, a culture that treats persons as objects instead of subjects.
Sam,
It was an accident. I’ve been in crowds to watch fireworks on the Fourth of July that could have resulted in the same kind of tragedy. It’s perfectly easy to imagine a society totally devoted to consumerism where nobody gets accidentally killed by crazed shoppers.
I find reaching a conclusion based on this one incident amusing. When it was pointed out in another thread that 18,000 people a year commit suicide with guns and 14,000 people are murdered with guns, almost everyone leapt to defend gun ownership and the American love of guns. But when one unlucky individual is trampled by a crowd in a frenzy to get bargains at Wal-Mart, suddenly we have a “culture of death.”
I see. You think I’m one of “those” people. Well, if I understand you correctly, I’m not. If the urge to please oneself on the euphoria of fireworks exploding to the point that a person could get trampled–that is, stepped on to death–then, I think it is a sign of the values of that culture. And the same goes for guns. All instances of the qualities of a culture of death as opposed to a civilazation of love.
Oh, and by the way, if what you mean by accident (that term, like most, is very ambiguous) is something like, “oops, sorry, it was an accident,” then, no it was not an accident. If getting mobbed all of a sudden makes things accidental, then, things are even worse than I thought.
Wow. This is horrible.
First off this cannot be labeled an accident. The person that first knocked this man down accidentally (maybe) then deliberately went on about his or her shopping instead of making sure that he was okay. Then the next person accidentally stepped on him, and then deliberately went on without assisting. Not an accident at all. They each decided that someone else would take care of the person and went on with their day.
“I look at these people’s faces and I keep thinking one of them could have stepped on him,” said one employee. “How could you take a man’s life to save $20 on a TV?”
Not an accident at all. They tore the door off the hinges all in the pursuit of a sale at Wal-Mart.