Now that is one fucking good question. Certainly we don’t need a day devoted to consumerism. Every day is Consumerism Day in America.

Are you kidding the Gods of the Market are angry at us we must beg borrow steal just to appease them and help the crops er Economy grow! Human Sacrifice is next probably the scape goat.
I expect after the GOP is done with Immigrants and Gays that African Americans will be next because Obama is the President Newt called Obama the Food bank or was it Welfare President?
I expect more comments like that once the GOP has a front runner. I just wish Obama had a Spine and would stand up for himself.

Ah yes. Green Christmas. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5IXlfJSEi4

Black Friday is a holiday and it better be a good holiday or something the Press can spin as good or else the market will dive.

And guess who is advocating a BUYcott of Black Friday.

Gee, who would have thought?

I wouldn’t go shopping tomorrow if you paid me.

jane! hope you had a great thanksgiving

Thank you for all that you do Jane.

oh god me either – can’t imagine the deals are worth the torment

I’m not planning to leave the apartment tomorrow, except for laundry purposes. My bus route passes by Wally World, so you can bet it’ll be packed full of bargain-hunting fools.

classic case of Oppositional Defiant Disorder – the lot of them

70% percent, so I heard.
“Just, Go out and Shop”

The subject of retail workers being forced to work on Thanksgiving day was discussed on Wednesday’s To The Point broadcast: Black Friday Creep Stirs Up a Backlash
Includes an interview with a Target worker who started an online petition to protest Target’s midnight opening on Black Friday.

Spending the day working in the studio, not ready to buy anything!

Support local artists, help your neighbors, give something to someone who needs it.

Hope everyone had a day of no stress and giving thanks for the comforts we have. Occupying has given me a new appreciation for my warm bed, a lamp to read by, a shower when I want it.

I signed that petition. It’s unbelievable to me that retail workers aren’t entitled to a day of peace with their families and friends on Thanksgiving. No, they have to sleep through the day instead so they can go in at midnight and be badgered by overstuffed shoppers for the greater glory of the Almighty Dollar.

Fuck this shit.

I have been avoiding black friday for many, many, many years.

The ultimate day of public insanity.

You be strangers.
Come for the festival, eh?
Yes.
Got a place to sleep it off yet?
Go around to Reger’s house.
He’s got rooms…
but you’ll have to hurry.
It’s almost the red hour.
Return or the Archons

x 2

At today’s extended family gathering, the verdict was unanimous, “You couldn’t pay me enough to go shopping on Black Friday!”

Catching up on news of the world, my 82-yr old mom asked where i got my news. I told her, “a number of places online, but especially the posts and links at Firedoglake.” Mom perked up and said, “Is that the nice blonde lady i see on tv sometimes, Jane Hamsher? I like what she has to say!” So now mom has a FDL bookmark on her browser.

+1 for the classic Star Trek reference.

Umm…spoiled brats ?

Agreed. Even more flabbergasted that the lightbulb hasn’t switched on in more people’s heads.
Solidarity is the solution – the ONLY solution.

What’s it going to take?

Wow. I couldn’t have hoped for that kind of reaction from my grandmother. Dyed-in-the-wool Republican for 108 years before she passed away last year.

For the Tea Party folks to be sleeping in cardboard boxes under some bridge someplace.

For me every day is “Participate As Little As Possible In Horror Show Of Mindless Depressing Consumption That Is Our World” Day

I’d rather buy Occupy Supply sox

Also giving a couple people subscriptions to the Funny Times, a last bastion of print fun w/endless good cartoons that I must support

“Oh, Lord Won’t You Buy Me a Mercedes Benz?”

Thats called “The Road”.

Super cool!

my mom & dad were both born in 1929, Great Depression babies raised by New Deal Democrats. Mom has been skeptical of blogs, but i think i have convinced her that online sites are where to find out news. She is so disgusted with the msm and what passes for news in the dead-tree version.

And I work every Black Friday, and am happy to do so. It used to be a day of being with family years ago, not shopping.

Sorry, if I seem kinda “Snarky”, just came from BJ.
Dog Eat Dog Snark Rules there.

Sounds like a smart, savvy lady.

For the Tea Party folks to be sleeping in cardboard boxes under some bridge someplace.

Alongside some smug Obamabots and the rest of us humans.

I had a Mgr. once that told us workers,”His Tale” of “having” to go stand in-line for 3 hours, from 2 a.m. to get a “Flat Screen” for his 9 year olds bedroom for Christmas.
“Saved a bundle”, He said.
Then took the rest of the morning off to sleep. At work. NO DISTURBANCES was told.
Lost 2 accounts that morning.
Great savings for the guys that got canned a few weeks later, lack of Business.

Well, whaddaya know? Sometimes stupid management types do get what they deserve.

Time for me to call it a night. Happy What’s-Left-of-Thanksgiving, and may your Black Friday be hassle-free.

night.

2 rules in my house around Thanksgiving.
No entry into grocery stores the day before Thanksgiving.
No entry into any other store the day after Thanksgiving.

So I’m thinkinhg today. What you think about all these people–and there aree alot— who are middle class and buying the Republican lines, on everything? i thought about it. Don’t like to be condescending or anything, but I think they’re ignorant fucking fools. Not sure if I feel sorry for them.

When did that happen? When we stopped being citizens and became instead consumers. When the idea got traction that the “market” was something we were supposed to serve rather than the other way ’round.

Tonight my nieces, whom I love dearly, got up from a fabulous dinner to run off to target and best buy because they were opening up at 9p.m. I suppose I could have been a cranky old uncle and berated them for it. But I didn’t. Instead, it made me wonder what we could offer that’s more desirable than buying cheap chinese crap. Made me wonder how to communicate the superiority of being over buying. I wish I had that answer.

Oppositional Defiant Disorder–right up there with pyromania and kleptomania. Hmmmmm. So, I take it ODD is associated with fire sales and shop-lifting. I think I’ll just stay home.

Genius naming though, on the eve of Euro-geddon. :-)

America’s economy runs on consumerism.

For second year in a row, I will buy NOTHING, not even so much as a gum ball.

At about the time when the country started to be referred to as the “Homeland”.
It’s a 21st century thing.

Good morning, Jane. Hope you had a great Thanksgiving. You and FDL are among the top things that I am thankful for. Love you, girl.

ODD. LOL. How apt!!

I wouldn’t go shopping tomorrow if you paid me.

I mean, do like lemmings come to mind?

I’ve never went out shopping that day for Christmas (maybe a few times for items that I needed right then and there, like any other day, but not Christmas). One, it’s way too early–I mean, we just finished T-day. Starting the holidays too early cheapens them.

stewartm

Well, hell, man, if they ever allowed us to stay in the present moment for a moment, bad things might happen.

Nah – much longer than that. I lived overseas for a while in the late ’70s & early ’80s, and I remember my dad talking about Black Friday one time when I came back to Team USA for a visit. It wouldn’ve been in the early ’80s.

I was disgusted by it then, and it’s only gotten worse since then.

Remember that Walmart worker who got killed in New York in 2008 bc the

lemmings

citizens mowed him down to get at all the red-hot bargains???

Don’t know when it got called Black Friday, but the mid-1970′s is about right. Friday was when Santa arrived by helicopter at The Mall. I was living in Pittsburgh when the department stores at the Mall decided to be open on Thanksgiving Day in the mid 1970′s, as an experimental counter-service for TV football widows.

Why Jane didn’t ask when did Hallowe’en become a holiday is a question only she can answer. I was in a South Florida mall department store a week before Hallowe’en in the mid-1970′s. I thought I would make a joke for two young women employees, so I asked if the store would be open on Hallowe’en. The joke not only failed, but one of them replied in a complaining tone, “Yeah, and we have to work that night”.

This year for the first time I saw ads on TV for Black Friday, not for Christmas shopping but for Black Friday shopping. Next they’ll start calling Thanksgiving Black Friday Eve. It disgusts me.