In December of 1979 I was cruising a very small box in the Gulf of Oman on board the USS Bainbridge (CGN-25), far out on point and standing between three carrier task forces and the military of Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran.

We didn’t hear about the 11 who died surging into Riverfront Coliseum in Cincinnati to see The Who until many days later.

That tragedy ended general admission seating at concerts.

If it is possible for something good to come from the death of 34-year-old Jdimytai Damour, it is that all retailers immediately end the annual stampedes into their stores and restore sanity and civility to the shopping experience.

The words of Kimberly Cribbs deeply disturbed me.

“When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling ‘I’ve been on line since yesterday morning,’” she said. “They kept shopping.”

Wake up America. Life is not reality television.

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 29th, 2008 at 1529 by Jeff Hess and is filed under Crime. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.