When the aliens come to our scorched, barren land and wonder what happened to its once flourishing inhabitants, they need only find a newspaper detailing Jdimytai Damour's killing to better understand our demise. The story has it all: A crowd of lunatics, riled up by weeks of Black Friday ads and lifetimes of in-your-face commercialism, stormed a Wal-Mart in a mad dash for sale-priced televisions, toppling and crushing Damour, a temp worker, under their feet. "Good riddance," the Martians will say, the article disintegrating in their claws.
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Black Friday indeed: A worker at a Long Island Wal-Mart died today after being trampled to death during a post-Thanksgiving stampede.
The Black Friday stampede plunged the Valley Stream outlet into chaos, knocking several employees to the ground and sending others scurrying atop vending machines to avoid the horde.
When the madness ended, 34-year-old Jdimytai Damour was dead and four shoppers, including a woman eight months pregnant, were injured.
Read more about America's disgusting worship of the almighty Hannah Montana DVDs and flatscreens after the jump.
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Uh oh! Everyone's poor and the holidays are coming up! How to get through the next few months, during which we all SIMPLY MUST celebrate the birth of God by spending money on each other, without inching even closer to the poorhouse? HERE COMES WAL-MART, BITCHES!
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Wal-Mart is claiming its decision to drop nearly 1,000 magazines is part of its recent “green” initiative. Incidentally, as far back as October, 2006 Wal-Mart had “analyzed sales performances by title for every individual retail store and calculated the appropriate allocation for each store to support sales and minimize returns.” So basically, if people who shopped at Wal-Mart bought the New Yorker, Wal-Mart would be thinking of another kind of green.
What happens when a retail giant who controls 20 percent of magazine newsstand sales drops 1,000 titles from its racks? Untamed terror!
Wal-Mart this week announced the major trimming, dropping the heaviest anvil on Meredith Corp., ousting circulation stunners Better Homes & Gardens and Ladies Home Journal, as well as Fitness. Fellow heavyweight Town & Country, from Hearst, will also disappear, as will Hachette's Home and Metropolitan Home.
The overarching trend, however, is to kick spin-offs to the curb. In Style's kid sister In Style Home won't be stocked, nor will Sports Illustrated for Kids. That, and any magazine aimed at the wealthy, sophisticated, or cultured goes into the trash heap: The New Yorker, W, Saveur, The Economist, BusinessWeek, Forbes, Fortune, and Robb Report.
The celebrity weeklies? They're staying — and will have plenty of new room to breathe.
• Wal-Mart is in trouble for taping New York Times reporter's phone calls. 'Yo, that's fucked up!' says the NSA.
• Meanwhile, advertisers, Norman Mailer not big fans of New York Times' book reviews.
• Ron Burkle banks $200 million; Jared Paul Stern wishes he could go back in time and extort him for a whole lot more.
• New Nightly News exec producer Alex Wallace started out working for CBS and NBC. Looks like she finally backed the right horse.
• "Seriously, Brian Williams' trip to Iraq isn't a ratings stunt. He just really, really, wanted to go," says NBC.
• Boston Globe sportswriter suspended for plagiarism; experts say this reporter's "a few yards short of a touchdown."
• Small bookstores being pushed out by big, corporate chains? Didn't we already see this when our girlfriend forced us to sit through
• And you thought silent birth was weird. Turns out 718 NYC moms prefer to have their babies au natural in a hydrotherapy tub. Of course they skip the Brooklyn hospitals and head for Manhattan. [NYO]
• Minnesota gets a wrestler and California a bad actor, New York gets … Malachy McCourt. The brother of Angela's Ashes's author will run for Governor. Hey, at least it isn't James Frey's brother. [NYP]
• From coyotes to cats … and back to coyotes. This time the coyote named Jacob hits Bronx parks. Which is so much nature-full than Manhattan. [amNY]
• We will not have Wal-Mart in this city. It is the last thing separating us from the rest of America. Well, that and Roosevelt Island trams. [NYDN]
• The subway flasher gets a whopping two years probation sentence … because some women might want to be flashed and in turn go out with this perv. March on Thao Nguyen. [Gothamist]
