Redefining Shopping Spree

I suppose most people have already heard about the raving lunatic from my current home town pepper spraying fellow shoppers at Wal*Mart to cut in line for a discounted X-box game console: Slate. Apparently she was not the only shopper redefining the phrase "shopping spree." Among the others was a grandfather charged with shoplifting trying to save his grandson from being trampled by onrushing shoppers, a family that refused robbers in a parking lot leading to the father being shot, two people shooting guns in the air in North Carolina before rushing into a store that didn't even close and there was a brawl at an electronics counter in Rome, New York (at another Wal*Mart, which has often been the site of violence on this sacred shopping day). Of course, this isn't the first year for this deal-infused lunacy: Ranker.com

What has happened to America? It appears we have completely lost our minds. But who is to blame? Could it be retailers who create this frenzy by hyping up the shoppers? Is it an economy that makes finding deals imperative? Or is it just a public that really will fall for any hype? The thing that has always bothered me about Black Friday is the fact that Thanksgiving is a four day holiday where people get together with friends and family to take a break from their regular lives and spend quality time together. Yet retailers took that Friday and made it the biggest shopping day of the year, thus cajoling people to abandon family and friends to engage in the real American past time -- shopping (often for crap you don't need and might never use). But this is the trend for all long weekends now from Memorial Day Sales to post-Christmas sales to Labor Day discounts (in maybe the biggest irony of all). I would love to believe that America could one day take a break from their shopping addiction and actually challenge corporations to show a modicum of concern for the average citizen, but that seems even crazier than pepper-spraying your shopping rivals, right?