Black Friday

[The Blue Flower]

Black Friday
11/26/04

The day after Thanksgiving, the two stories that dominated the mainstream news were the contested election in the Ukraine and the first official shopping day of Christmas. In the first story, tens of thousands of Ukrainians from all over the country stood outside in five-degree weather for days and nights to protest voting irregularities that reached a level of fraudulence that made the official results illegitimate in their and the world’s eyes. These irregularities are, in fact, the very same ones we in the US experienced on November 2, 2000 and 2004. Exit polls did not match outcomes, there were not enough voting machines, people had to stand in line for hours in order to cast a vote. Even the police walked away from their orders to stand against the protestors, and joined with them to demonstrate for a clean election.

In the second story, tens of thousands of Americans braved chilly temperatures in the dark of night to be the first in line for bargain prices. The images on the small screen were of overfed, boorish consumers charging over each other through the stores. On the day before, they of course did the patriotic thing and overindulged in Thanksgiving dinner and football. Election problems reaching the level of fraud, atrocities committed against civilian populations in Iraq, the systematic destruction of checks and balances in government, the remaking of our security apparatus into an agency with first loyalty to the illegitimate president—absolutely none of these things were on the radar. Only two people in the media, Keith Olberman of MSNBC and Randi Rhodes of Air America Radio, have taken up the cause of election fraud.

The news readers called the day “Black Friday”, the day that would put retailers in the black on their balance sheets and make up for lagging sales all the rest of the year. As my daughter and I watched these two stories unfold on BBC World News last night, her reaction to the first story was, “Go, Ukrainians!” To the second, in which people were being trampled in a store on their way to the toy department, “That’s just embarrassing.”

The story that really got my attention, though, was the one about the billboard on I-4, just outside Orlando. It’s a picture of W with only two words: Our Leader. Translated into German, they would read “Der Fuhrer”.

Black Friday, indeed.

[Eric J in MN]

1. "Der Fuhrer"="The Leader," not "Our Leader" NT

NT

[necso]

2. What is really sweet is that,

as I saw the story (here I think), Clear Channel was responsible for the billboards.

And I think that "The Leader" is perhaps a better translation of "Der Fuhrer". But certainly the possessive pronoun form would ruin the stark quality of the german phrase, so yours is a more appealling translation.

Cheer up, it only gets worse from here on out.

...

You have aroused my interest. What definition of defenestrate lies behind your username?

[haktar]

3. If you insist on hair-splitting:

While "Der Führer" was mostly used, "Unser Führer" was also quite common.
BTW. If you don't have an "ü" on your keyboard, You should use "ue" instead. So the grammatically correct translation would be "Unser Fuehrer". :-)

[necso]

4. Ok, so I got

lazy on the umlaut (as I recall the term)... Besides it passed my spell checker.

And I still think that "Der" sounds better and looks better than "Unser". "Unser Führer" just doesn't do it for me. "The" also rather connotes "The One" or "Everyone's", at least to me. And while this is inconsistent with a literal translation, it makes for a much more powerful (and commonly recognized) "image".

But I am much more interested in the "defenestrate".

It has such an interesting range of definitions.

[The Blue Flower]

5. Defenestrate

As in "throwing them out."

[lpbk2713]

6. Bush is working on his autobiography.

He's going to call it Mein Kampf.

[buckettgirl]

7. Personally...

I am glad to have had a day off from politics and to enjoy a dinner with my family, most of whom I don't see but on holidays. It was nice to have a day where we were just normal people participating in normal holiday traditions on a normal day. It was very nice. I was very glad to have things in my life to be thankful for and to put aside worrying about the rest of the world for a day.

Friday, my husband and I went out to our local mall - we went window shopping, and I hinted at somethings I would like for christmas :). Then we had lunch, bought groceries (we spent a total of $85 on lunch and groceries - nothing else), and went home. We put up christmas decorations too.
It isn't too often that I get to spend whole days with my husband because we are usually too busy with other things to just stop and relax. It was very nice not to worry about the rest of world.

Now, back it is back to politics again. I intend to be as active as I can because I can't sit here and take it, what others are doing to obliterate democracy. But, it does seem quite unnerving when a person thinks that just because people take a few days off and try to retain some semblance of a normal life, there must be something bad about it. What does it matter to you or anyone if I put my outrage and compassion for other events in the back of my mind for 2 whole days?
But I do also think that those people who MUST indulge in all those sales and fight over stupid toys is embarrassing as well. Materialistic values at its best.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

8. I believe the sheeple are spending.....

to make themselves feel better. We have millions in this country that equate spending with comfort and use it to escape reality. They feel in their gut that things are wrong, just like we do. They prefer to avoid it.

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[datasuspect]

10. since when

did they start calling the shopping day after thanksgiving "black friday?"

[OneTwentyoNine]

11. I guess since Bush trashed the economy....

This became the day that would put these business's in the black.


Yeah...the economy is so great that people have to stand outside like thier in a soup line to get a bargin.

[datasuspect]

12. i dunno

it just sounds weird in the context.

didn't they use this phraseology for stock market crashes and the like?

sounds like some more meme priming.