Black Friday

In any other year, this photo — fronting the NYT on Thanksgiving — would be perfectly straight-forward: it’s those people, once again, camping out at a chain store waiting to get unimaginable deals on stuff they don’t need and likely can’t afford, the future of our economy resting, between today and December 25th,  on their backs.  This year, though, the photo of these tents– which I’m sure wasn’t lost on the editors, at all — is as much reminiscent of the Occupy camps. With the recent storm trooper actions against Occupy, the intimation here is that your consumer campers — and the “make war, go shopping,”ideology — have won the day.

From: Opening Day For Shoppers Shows Divide. (NYT). Notice the visual language here, by the way, the phrase “opening day” turning the spending-mania (on Buy Nothing Day) into a national pastime.

(photo: Larry W. Smith/EPA. caption: Shoppers at a Best Buy in Mesquite, Tex., camped out to be the first in line for deals like high-definition televisions for $200.)