“If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.” 

Unfortunately for the employees of the Burlington Coat Factory in Columbus, Ohio yesterday, at least 1,500 shoppers apparently forgot that little nugget of wisdom.

After a woman, later identified as Linda Brown, pulled up to the store in a rented limousine and loudly announced that she had just won the lottery and would pay for everyone’s purchases of up to $500, shoppers, convinced that they were being treated to free merchandise, began snapping up as many clothes as they could carry and bringing them to the register to have them rung up. 

It didn’t take long for the shoppers to call their friends and relatives to inform them of the “great deal”, and in no time, the store was filled with at least 500 shoppers, with another 1000 outside trying to get in. Registers were ringing up purchase after purchase. One customer, Candace Jordan, informed Ms. Brown that she didn’t need new clothes; she needed money to pay the rent. Ms. Brown wrote a check for the requested amount for her on the spot. 

I want you to remember Candace Jordan’s name; I’m coming back to her later.

Well, to make a long story short, it turned out that the entire thing was a hoax. Linda Brown had not actually won $1.5 million in the lottery. In fact, she had nothing, but by the time the customers had realized it, she had taken off in her rented limo. Unfortunately for Ms. Brown, she had made a crucial error; if you’re going to use a limo as a getaway vehicle, don’t rip off the driver. The driver turned her in to the police after he had realized that he was not going to get the $900 that she owed him. 

What Linda Brown did was reprehensible, and it turns out that she is a repeat offender; this was not her first brush with the law. Likely, she’s going to be spending some time in jail. However, in my opinion the behavior of the customers was even worse than Ms. Brown’s. 

You see, when they found out that they weren’t getting free merchandise after all, they decided to not only run out of the store with their ill-gotten gains, but vandalize whatever they couldn’t carry out. It was the looting in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina all over again. They were promised free merchandise, and by God, they were going to get it. The employees of the store lost hundreds, maybe even thousands of dollars worth of stolen merchandise, not to mention a huge mess to clean up once the riot was over. 

The worst part about this riot was that it was completely senseless. These customers technically weren’t ripped off; the purchases weren’t under their names, they were under Linda Brown’s.   It wasn’t their money at stake. The worst that would’ve happened is that they simply wouldn’t have gotten the clothes for free.   If they really wanted them, they only needed to pay for what they actually could have afforded. They did plenty of ripping off of their own though, figuratively and literally.

Linda Brown, as bad as her behavior was, at least has an excuse; the woman is reported to be mentally disturbed to some degree. She has a history of odd behavior, centering on a desperate need for attention. The customers, however, have no excuses. 

So what would possess 1,500 people to act like sharks at a feeding frenzy?   It’s simple, really… the promise of free goods combined with the “entitlement” mentality that’s on the rise in America. It’s this mentality that has contributed to the drain of not only our finances but to the rise of the Democrat Party in general, along with the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barney Frank (not that I believe people like the above shoppers have any idea who these politicians are) and most notably, the election of Barack Obama. 

I think it’s a pretty safe bet that most of those rioting shoppers are Obama voters, or vote Democrat in general. To the Democrats, there’s no better tactic than convincing the masses that not only do they “deserve” or “have the right to” various goods or services, but that they can actually deliver these to them; anything to keep the masses voting the Dems back into power. After years of such indoctrination in our government-run public schools, the media and entertainment industry, the result is incidents like the one in Ohio. 

Promise the world, blame the opposition for anything they can’t deliver, keep their delegates angry enough at the Republicans to vote for you again. Rinse and repeat. 

The liberals have done their job well.

Now, remember Candace Jordan? The woman who asked for money to pay her rent? In my opinion, she’s the worst moocher of the lot. This woman actually went to the store, not to buy a coat (she said she didn’t need clothes, remember), but for the express purpose of getting free money from someone she thought was a millionaire. Kind of reminds me of the woman who cried to Obama that she needed a house, or more recently, the unruly crowd who thought they were being handed “Obama checks” a few days ago.

Oh well, at least in the end the joke was on her, but like the other shoppers, she didn’t actually lose any money, she only didn’t receive something that she was promised (which she really didn’t earn in the first place). She’s no worse off than when she started.

Perhaps, in her own twisted way, Linda Brown was trying to teach us a lesson about just how selfish and irresponsible we’ve become. Unfortunately, she’s also demonstrated just how gullible we can really be. It’s just a shame that so many people have such a sense of entitlement, that they will learn absolutely nothing from this.

Sources:

Lottery Hoax Causes Riot at Ohio Coat Factory: Mehgan Barr, AP Writer, Associated Press, 10/14/09