If you’re one of the few people who haven’t ever seen the episode, here’s a snippet:

Source: YouTube WKRP Turkey Excerpts

Now that’s pretty funny (no actual turkeys were harmed in the filming of this episode).

But as happens all too often in life, the happy and the joyful turned sad today on the news that Worker dies at Long Island Wal-Mart after being trampled in Black Friday stampede.

It’s not the first time this has happened, in fact, I can remember stories from the past several Black Fridays of people being trampled.

Which reminded me of another episode of WKRP. A much sadder one:

On December 3, 1979 outside the Riverfront Coliseum in Cincinnati, Ohio eleven people were killed and dozens were injured in a crush of people trying to get into the arena. Fans were waiting outside for a Who concert scheduled to take place that night.

Thousands of fans (with first-come, first-served festival seating tickets) rished towards the locked doors when they mistook the band’s sound check for the concert having started. People were trampled and crushed before the doors were unlocked. The Who went on to play that night, unaware of the tragedy outside. (Source)

That episode can be currently seen on YouTube, split into 3 parts:

Part 1:

Part 2

Part 3

From the same source quoted above:

After the tragedy Cincinnati put a ban on festival or general admission seating. That ban was only lifted once for a 2002 Bruce Springsteen concert and then on August 4, 2004 the ban was lifted totally by city councel, concerned that performers were skipping Cincinnati because they could not have general admission seating.

To prevent any problems, new rules limit the number of tickets (based on square footage of the concert location) and all the doors to the festival seating area will have to be opened two hours before the concert. Ushers and security personnel must be in place before the doors are opened, and a written evacuation plan is required.

I’m not sure what lessons we can learn from this. I’m not sure there are any lessons to be learned from it except the sort of pragmatic ones that Cincinnati figured out.

But we need to do something.

I hope someone, somewhere, who is smarter than me will think of a way to keep this from happening in another 365 days.

Stay to the end, in case you think she was just unaware of what was behind her.

Update 2008-11-26: The story that just won’t go away (at least until after Thanksgiving) has a new chapter:

(Note: Bush had been speaking and you could hear a [fire? police?] siren in the background which Keith alludes to at the very beginning.

You can find more videos from Countdown with Keith Olbermann at his website.

Let me tell you something: ultimately it is not the nuts that are the greatest threat to democracy. As history has shown us over, and over, and over again, the greatest threat to democracy is the unbridled power of the state’s over its citizens, which, by the way, that power is always unleashed in the name of preservation.

– Mandy Hampton (played by Moira Kelly) from “The State Dinner”, Season 1, Episode 7 of “The West Wing” (Original airdate of November 10, 1999), starting at the 20 minute 17 second mark on the 2nd DVD.

Two years before 9/11/2001.

Long before George W. Bush took office, a year before the nightmare 2000 election, and here we have a TV show trying to warn us about the true greatest threats to our democracy, our freedom.

Did we lose more freedom from 9/11 or from the excesses of power that came from the president afterwards?

Did we lose more standing in the world from what happened in 9/11 or from our reaction to it?

Come to think of it, President George W. Bush might benefit from a close watching of “A Proportional Response” (Season 1, Episode 3) wherein President Bartlet is warned about an overreaction in response to military action against those who attacked first, warning that what he wanted to do would be seen as the action of an inexperienced president.

This is why I inwardly roll my eyes every time someone boasts about not watching television.

Enemies (s01e08)

Mandy talking about a bill that the President had gotten passed which would “keep the banking lobby from getting whatever it wants, including total bank deregulation.” (Around the 38:24 mark.)

Original air-date? November 17, 1999.

The Short List (s01e09)

Before sending a judge (who did not believe that privacy was a constitutional right) to the Supreme Court, Sam Seaborn says:

Starting around 36:08

[The right to Privacy is] not just about abortion. It’s about the next 20 years. In the ’20s and ’30s it was the role of government, ’50s and ’60s it was Civil Rights. The next two decades are going to be privacy.

I’m talking about the Internet. I’m talking about cell phones, I’m talking about health records and who’s gay and who’s not.

And, moreover, in a country in a country born of the will to be free, what could be more fundamental than this?

Original air date November 24, 1999.

Anyone who doesn’t think Sorkin is a genius should have their head examined.

He Shall, from Time to Time… (s01e12)

Around 30:57

Barlet: “What does India want?” Lord John Marbury: “A computer industry. And for that they an infrastructure, and that is what you can give them.”

Original air date: January 12, 2000. Many Americans were still tinkering with their AOL accounts and their first email addresses.