The Coat Factory give-away that wasn't

Readers have doubtless come across news reports of the woman who pulled up to a branch of Burlington Coat Factory in Columbus, OH this morning.

A woman being driven around in a rented limousine pulled up at a coat store and announced she'd won the lottery and would pay for everyone's purchases, police said, but she ended up causing a riot when customers realized it was a hoax.

Angry customers threw merchandise around and looted, leaving the store looking as though a hurricane had passed through it, police said.

Linda Brown was arrested Tuesday after an hours-long shopping spree that began when she hired a stretch Hummer limousine to drop her off at a Burlington Coat Factory store, police Sgt. Lt. Michael Deakins said. Brown walked to a cash register and loudly announced she had won the lottery and would pay for each person's merchandise up to $500, he said.

"Well, of course, people like to hear that," Deakins said. "Apparently they were in line calling relatives who were not at the store and told them to come."

People flooded the registers as cashiers began ringing up purchase after purchase, but Brown had not yet paid the bill, Deakins said. At least 500 people filled the aisles and another 1,000 were outside trying to get in, he said.

"She was telling people she won $1.5 million," Deakins said. "But it ends up she didn't win anything. She had no money to pay for anything."

There's more at the link.

Hmm . . . Put these points together:

• A gullible group is offered 'something for nothing' using other people's money;
• As word spreads, more and more people show up to 'get their share';
• When they find out that there never was any free money, instead of blaming the perpetrator of the hoax, they blame the store, the cops and anyone else they can think of, and trash the place (stealing whatever they can get away with) rather than accept reality.

Another quote from the article:

By the time employees realized Brown didn't have any cash to pay, [police Detective Steven Nace] said, she already had taken off in the limo.

That's when angry customers, realizing they weren't getting free coats, began throwing merchandise on the floor and grabbing clothes without paying for them, Nace said.

"Everybody was like, 'I still want my free stuff,' and that started the riot," he said. "It looks like (Hurricane) Katrina went through the store."

I'm glad it was Detective Nace who brought up the Katrina comparison, because the sort of behavior described is typical of what we saw locally from thousands upon thousands of inner-city New Orleans residents after they were evacuated. They felt 'entitled'; they wanted their 'free stuff'; and they didn't object to rioting, robbing and trashing anything and anyone to get it. We had to persuade many of them 'the hard way' that such behavior was not tolerated in civilized society.

What does this incident say about US society as a whole? I know what it says to me, but if I say it here, I'll have the Politically Correct police all over me . . . so I invite you to figure it out for yourself. Odds are, if you're a regular reader of this blog, we share a common opinion of those involved - and no, their race has nothing whatsoever to do with the matter! It's their conduct, culture and social conditioning that are the problem.

Peter