As much as The Gadfly tries to deny to himself the reality of what we have become as a society, at some point it does hit home.
It's quiet inside Macy's gargantuan flagship store in Manhattan's Herald Square, a half hour before the doors are set to open for the much-hyped annual shopping frenzy known as Black Friday.
Of course, it's not actually Friday. It's Thursday night. It's still Thanksgiving.
No matter. Lines snake out from each of the store's many entrances, hugging its exterior walls and curling around the block. Shoppers huddle together in the 32-degree chill, largely outfitted in puffy black coats and scarves wrapped around their necks. A New York Police Department van sits nearby, a half-dozen officers watching over the scene with semi-automatic rifles in hand. The largest crowd lingers outside the main entrance on Broadway, corralled in barricades so they don't spill out too far into the square. TV crews scamper around, documenting the scene.
I stand alongside a throng of photographers, cameramen and reporters who have stationed themselves around what will become the point of peak hysteria. We're right on the front lines, wedged between the Michael Kors and Coach displays that immediately greet shoppers at the entrance.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/28/macys-black-friday_n_4358045.html
The Gadfly is old enough (perhaps too old) to remember when Thanksgiving was a holiday looked forward to for good food, distant family gathering together, crazy old uncle antics, football, and just an overall sense that there still remained a common, human thread between us all that signified caring for one another.
Black Friday. At least they assigned the appropriate color for a day devoid of human dignity.
Oh and fuck you to the consumberbots enabling this shit. You all deserve the shitty, apathetic society you're making for yourselves.
----TFG
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