I'm not sure there is anything that says more about what this country has become in recent years than the concept of "Black Friday."

[caption id="attachment_1816" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Black Friday"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/medium_riotblackfriday.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-1816" title="medium_riotblackfriday" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/medium_riotblackfriday.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="201" /></a>[/caption]

Bargain hunters line up in front of stores waiting for them to open on the Friday after Thanksgiving so that they can get fantastic bargains on limited numbers of items for sale. My first experience with it was 11 years ago, when I found myself outside a Walmart in Upland, California, at 5 a.m., looking at a line of 1,500 people waiting for the store to open at 6 a.m.

I don't remember exactly what the bargains were, although I do remember that DVD players were new enough that they were still selling for $125 or so and Walmart had several hundred of them for $50 each. The other stuff was pretty much the same as it is now -- game systems, computers, big screen televisions. I know there were very small numbers of items at incredible bargains -- $1,500 televisions for $500, $1,000 computers for $300. Enough to make some folks really aggressive when the doors opened.

If that sounds like a recipe for disaster, it's because you're looking at it from 2012 and not 2001. You've read the stories in intervening years about the weaker shoppers who got knocked down and trampled, or the Walmart employee on Long Island who actually was knocked down and died from his injuries. My own favorite horror story was about the woman who made sure she got one of the real bargains by using pepper spray to get the competition out of her way.

<em>Hey, is this a great country or what?</em>

Actually, Black Friday keeps edging forward on the calendar. Instead of 6 a.m. Friday, the Walmarts are starting their sales at 8 p.m. tonight and going through the night. I won't be anywhere near any of the sales. We got most of the things we'll be giving our grandchildren last weekend, and our kids and their spouses are old enough that gift cards

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