Online Shopping Ruined Malls, But So Did Jerry Springer Lowlifes

If you live in Nashville then you no doubt know that on Saturday two people — who are what I refer to as “Jerry Springer People” — had a major dust-up at that city’s Opry Mills Mall.

The skirmish got so out of hand that everyone in the building had to evacuate. 

The mall has a Chili’s restaurant inside, and it was there that a boyfriend and girlfriend had the mother of all slugfests. 

As reported by the Nashville-based WSMV, the girlfriend stormed into Chili’s, where her boo worked. She assaulted him. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m guessing infidelity. 

Whatever the cause, the lovers quarrel escalated.

RELATED: One Way Malls Can Entice Conservative Shoppers This Christmas

Profane words were doubtlessly exchanged. Fists were thrown. Someone pulled someone else’s hair. During the melee, someone accidentally knocked a plateful of Baby Back Ribs onto the floor. Those Baby Back Ribs, of course, are no longer edible. Chicken Crisper Combos were used as missiles. All this, because someone’s Baby Daddy did his woman wrong. 

The fight reportedly spilled over outside the restaurant and into the main food court area. The spectators in the food court had a strong enough stomach to eat junk food…but not strong enough to take in a Roman gladiator fight. 

From the food court, everyone fled. 

No one anymore ever appreciates dinner and a show.

Rumors soon spread of “shots fired.” This, even though members of the Metro Nashville Police Department later said they found no evidence of gunfire.

As the Memphis-based WREG reported, “multiple individuals were assessed at the scene for scrapes and bumps from falling while rushing for the exit or running outside, as well as heightened anxiety amid the chaotic situation, nobody was brought to the hospital.”

The Tennessee Department of Transportation even had to close the two major exits to the mall, off Briley Parkway, to investigate. 

RELATED: It Takes a Village…But Villages Have White Trash Idiots

I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again. Yes, online shopping is putting a dent in every malls’ revenue. Mall security, however, does a poor job containing dangerous situations like the one I described above. Perhaps, mall security can’t do a whole lot for fear of a harassment/brutality lawsuit from the very people who are disrupting the mall in the first place?

That’s why malls are dying. That’s why people in general would rather stay home than go out anywhere, whether it’s malls, movie theaters, restaurants, etc. That’s why they’d rather order online. 

I wrote in The Hayride in the fall of 2023 about the decline of one mall, the one I visited most as a child, Pecanland, in Monroe, La.  

Pecanland Mall in the 1980s was a palace of toy stores, bookstores, cookie stores and music stores. The mall even had a comic book and baseball card store. 

The food court smelled like corn dogs.

The movie theater had 10 screens, unheard of at the time, and people waited in long lines to get in.

At Christmas the mall smelled like…well…Christmas.

That was the 1980s, a far more innocent time.

The 90s came. Then the early 2000s. By then, America was less innocent. The mall started to decline and became less and less of a big deal.

Parents were too cheap to hire babysitters to monitor their kids. They falsely assumed their rowdy and undisciplined children “had a constitutional right” to loiter at this or any other mall without actually buying something. The quote is real. During my newspaper days, I interviewed one moronic parent who said just that.

IN THE NEWS: Reagan National And The 2011 Incident You May Have Forgotten

Teenagers brawled in the food court and behaved like savages in the wild. Every time I witnessed such a display, I thought of Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday in Tombstone and muttered “Very cosmopolitan” before I traipsed on to the next point of interest.

One hundred miles west, residents of Shreveport, La. converted the old South Park Mall into a church. This, after “Jerry Springer People” ruined that building as a place to do commerce.

Governments in other cities buy dead malls and turned them into vo-tech schools or centers for at-risk youth.

The rest of us who are now middle-aged and remember how special malls were in the 1980s mourn a time in America that was far more innocent…and will never come again.

Yes, trashy people really do ruin everything.

Special thanks to Warhammer’s Wife proofreading this story before publication to make certain there were no misspellings, grammatical errors or other embarrassing mistakes and/or typos. Follow Warhammer on Twitter @Real_Warhammer