Black Friday

Thursday

Cockburn

Cockburn will come to your Christmas party

Cockburn woke up bleary-eyed, splashed water on his face and took stock of his calendar this Black Friday. It is already filling up with events from embassies, magazines and cautious frenemies. He spent his Thanksgiving down South, practicing grounding techniques and avoiding stirring pots, except for the pot of cranberry sauce. It isn’t easy being Washington’s nosiest socialite – and even Cockburn needs to get away from the swamp once in a while. However, the time for wholesome family fun has ended. Your disoriented correspondent will be on a plane headed back to Reagan before all the decorations are up in the White House.

black friday
Stephen L. Miller

The Black Friday brawl is a precious national pastime

Right now, freedom fighters around the world, from Hong Kong to Iran, are captivating the world and our media, as they desperately fight the oppression of the state for the democratic rights we already enjoy; specifically Black Friday. This is why our capitalistic democracy is already great. As Hong Kong faces lethal bullets from Chinese state police, we face elderly veterans at the entrance of Walmart, sacrificing their time and safety once again in often times frigid temperatures to face down a determined, ruthless enemy, just as they did at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir. This is why America is already great.

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Jarvis Dupont

Black Friday is racist

Every year we are forced to endure a week long festival of capitalist peacocking, as the world’s largest multi-billion-dollar corporations invade our high streets and inboxes. Like a sex-worker gyrating her hips in the window of an Amsterdam brothel, these brazen online stores spare no shame in their attempts to woo me into their banner-bedecked bordellos with ‘tempting offers’ and ‘unmissable deals’. Not that I’m saying sex work is shameful, you understand, it’s an admirable and empowering trade for anyone who has the proficiency for it. But when it comes to spending my wad, the last thing I want is Amazon dot com twerking like a cheap whore in my inbox.

Wednesday

Dot Wordsworth

The problem with ‘black market’

From our UK edition

The term black market should be replaced with illegal market because it could suggest racial bias or discrimination, according to UK Finance, a trade body for British banking and financial services. I suppose it is asking for the black never to be used with negative connotations. That will be a black day for the language. Who ever thought that black market had anything to do with black people? It’s not as if black people are stereotyped as illicit money-changers. It cannot be long before Penzance changes the name of its principal street, Market Jew Street. The name has nothing to do with Jews but derives from the Cornish Marghas Yow, meaning Thursday Market. By contrast, Black Friday has been promoted in Britain to chivvy people into buying goods as they do in America.