You open the papers and what do you see? Buy one get one half off and 50% off of ALL electronics. All over newspapers on the television and on the internet it’s SALE, SALE, and SALE. No matter where you happened to look Black Friday was mentioned there, on websites, news programs, billboards, television ads, and newspapers it was there.

When did a glorified sale get so important that it needed to be reported all week? While the money from the sales is undoubtedly helpful as this year stores garnered about 10.6 billion dollars.

It’s not really worth the violence that occurs among the shoppers on Black Friday. This year alone three people were killed during sales in California and New York. At a Toys “R” Us in Palm Desert, Ca two men were shot dead and at a Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, New York a worker was trampled to death as people rushed in to grab items on sale.

Why do these horrible things happen? Are we becoming a society that holds materialistic value over much more pressing matters? If you’ve noticed every-time Black Friday rolls around every other news story is about sales. Regardless of the importance of the story it will be pushed back in favor of $19.99 digital cameras at your local mall. For instance, the attacks in Mumbai, while they received a fair share of news I felt that for the whole week proceeding Black Friday the attacks were told as secondary news story when it should’ve been front page news. It’s wrong when people more know about what sales are going on at their hometown Target than what went down in Mumbai or that modern-day Somali pirates have been raiding cargo ships on the seas.