Randi Rhodes: Brutal Consumerism

If you went shopping on Black Friday, I hope you’ve recovered... literally, for some of you. There were fights, assaults, and even shootings at Black Friday sales around the country. On the upside, sales were bigger than ever. By the end of Black Friday, the only things left on the floor of a lot of stores were pools of blood, and the occasional body. People! Enough with the violence at the shopping centers! They don’t call it the “mall” because you go there and maul people!

A woman in California sprayed the crowd with pepper spray so she could get her hands on a discounted Xbox video game console. They say these video games encourage violence. Putting them on sale sure seems to. Video of the incident shows chaos as shoppers try to cover their burning eyes. I hope the Walmart had the good sense to announce a sale on Visine in the pharmacy department. At another Walmart, a riot broke out over $2 waffle makers. OK, fighting over merchandise is just plain wrong, and fighting over a $2 waffle maker is just plain stupid. What are you going to do with that $2 waffle maker this Christmas? The riot for it was all over the news—anybody you give it to will know that you only paid $2 for it.

The Occupy movement was urging boycotts of big chain stores. They couldn’t very well have tried to occupy any of the big stores on Black Friday—they would have had to have lined up way in advance along with all those losers waiting for a $2 waffle maker. I’m sure the Occupy people didn’t want to be anywhere near any Walmarts on Black Friday. They’ve had enough experience getting hit with pepper spray, thank you very much.

I thought someday the 99 percent would rise up and make their demands heard. I just didn’t think that their demand would be for $2 waffle makers. Maybe we could take some of the energy that’s being used to fight with fellow shoppers over cheap merchandise and direct it toward creating a standard of living for the 99 percent that doesn’t require us to fight over scraps.

Today’s Homework | Discuss

The Democratic National Committee has rolled out a new ad pitting Mitt against Mitt...

Read more: http://www.randirhodes.com/main.html#ixzz1f35j68SR