Black Friday Shopping Controversy

Throughout the semester, Kathleen Parker has used various strategies that repeated in multiple articles. Most of the strategies were commonly used to boost her credibility to help her persuade the audience. Although there were a large variety of topics discussed in her essays, Parker uses similar strategies to develop those topics.

Andrew Leonard's "Black Friday: Consumerism Minus Civilization" argues that the Black Friday shopping spree has begun to get out of hand in the previous years. Leonard explains that consumerism is a great thing for America, but showing Americans that it is okay to go crazy when shopping for deals is not the way to approach the buying markets. He mentions a Target advertisement and states that, "The Crazy Target Lady is not a joke. Watch her cannibalize her gingerbread man, or strategize her reverse psychology shopping techniques... she is America. She might be a lunatic, but it's a culturally approved lunacy" (Leonard 166). The author emphasizes how Americans embrace the acts of the target lady as funny and amusing, but during Black Friday shopping, some shoppers will take the night to the extreme like the advertisement does. He does remind us that there is light at the end of the tunnel, by reporting how shoppers are seeing the problems with the night of crazy shopping. I agree with Leonard that there are problems with Black Friday ads, and that consumers are realizing Black Friday shopping is taking away from Thanksgiving.

Black Friday shopping is a controversial issue in the United States; while many believe the day after Thanksgiving is a part of holiday festivities, others view it as destructive. Throughout “Black Friday: Consumerism Minus Civilization,” Andrew Leonard argues that the chaos of Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving in which crowds of Americans shop all night for extremely low prices, lessens the sophistication of Americans and the true meaning of the holidays. People become so consumed in the idea of endless sale prices that they forget to embrace what they already have, such as family, food, and shelter. He believes that Black Friday shopping has become out of control and describes the negative effects of excessive consumerism. he explains how most consumers act completely insane while Black Friday shopping and how society encourages this behavior by creating commercials and advertisements. Furthermore, Leonard states that it hurts the economy and damages one’s mental health. While Leonard is probably wrong when he claims that Black Friday shopping is completely troublesome to America’s well-being, he is right that consumerism overpowers the true significance of Thanksgiving.

Imagine being in charge of a nation that has so little money families are splitting up in search of work and many are losing their jobs and becoming homeless. This was the situation President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was facing at the beginning of the 1930s. He and his administration had to come up with a plan to end the depression and rebuild the economy before the fragile country crumbled even more. While some of their responses to the American Great Depression were more effective than others, they all impacted the nation in a positive way and changed the role of the federal government for the better.

After the crash, many business failed, banks closed, and because of that, lots of workers were out of job. Homes and farms had been lost to foreclosure. In 1933, the government finally decided to do something, congress passed the Securities Act of 1933, which required companies that sold stocks and other securities to communicate important information to consumers and set up systems to prevent fraud. The law was strengthened in 1934 when congress created the Securities and Exchange commission (“Black Tuesday”). Herbert Hoover, the president of US during this event, thought the stock market would get better within 60 days (Stock). The crash also helped lead to the onset of the Great Depression by undermining confidence in the economy, but it

Grammar Result: Prior to The Great Depression, the United States was booming. Life was good for many. Companies were expanding nationwide, people were striking rich, and the stock markets were rising. Soon, the United States became the country where everyone wanted to be. Many immigrants were immigrating to the United States for opportunities.

Document two explains what happened when the banks went out of business. Black Tuesday was in October 29, 1929 and it was the day that the stock market crashed most deeply. This hinted to the start of the Great Depression. The stock market crashed because people did not have enough money to pay back the people who they borrowed money from. Due to this process the market started to fall. With prices falling, brokers asked investors to pay back what they owed. Investors then sold their stock to repay their loans. A panic quickly set in. Between October 24 and October 29, desperate people tried to unload millions of shares. As a result, stock prices dropped even further. Banks were also running out of

Many believed that Black tuesday began the Great Depression, on October 29, 1929 a group on panicked sellers traded nearly 16 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange causing the Dow Jones Industrial Average to fall. Others believe it was the stock market crash in 1929, or that Black tuesday was just the begining triggering the stock market to crash causing the Great Depression. As soon as president Franklin D. Roosevelt came into office he began searching for ways to better American life as quickly as possible. He proposed a series of programs through The New Deal, these programs created jobs for many unemployed men, while others offered aid, created the FDA so people know whats in the products they're purchasing, and banking acts to

The Arts and Crafts Show was a well attended event, that mostly appealed to 35-65 year olds. Both vendor sellers and attendees very much enjoyed this event. Sean Castner, a crafter who sells his creations on etsy.com, has been coming to this event all his life. Sean Castner said, “I love it! It gets bigger every year, and it’s a great way to showcase the town.” Sean Castner has been coming for the last 17 years for his booth to help his company expand. You can find his business on

Black Friday is the following Thanksgiving Day in the United States, traditionally the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Black Friday is not an official holiday, but many workers have the day off as part of the Thanksgiving holiday, this increases the number of potential shoppers. Retailers often decorate for the Christmas and holiday season weeks beforehand. Many retailers open extremely early, with most of the retailers typically opening at 5 A.M. or even earlier. Retailers use Black Friday to kick off the holiday season to use much of their products to go from the red to the black.

Being one of the biggest attraction in Bloomsburg that only comes once a year it is a huge deal to the residents that live here all year round. The local schools sometimes shuts down for the whole entire week or maybe just for a long weekend. This fair is practically everything you would imagine a state fair would be and they have it all here. You can adopt a puppy, play with farm animals, and whatever you could think you would need they will have it. If your looking for good deals on home decor your best bet is to go when its closer towards the end of the week when the fair is almost over because at that point people do not want to be traveling back home with stuff they brought up and just want to get rid of it. This fair even has all the traditional shows you see in the movies such as the bearded lady, the man with no head, and they even had one named serpent lady all for the cost of 50 cents. Alpha Sigma Alpha devotes their time into this fair every year and withholds two stands, one where you can play darts and the other where you put a quarter down and spin the wheel to see if the arrow lands on the one you picked. They were able to raise up to 2,000 dollars and was equally split and donated towards the S. June Smith Center and Girls on the

1. What is Black Friday? 2. How did Black Friday come about? 3.

For our theater project, my group and I decided to focus on showing how much our American culture has become obsessed with obtaining materials, even to the point of hurting others without giving one ounce of thought. In our world today, some people are very focused on getting the latest, greatest object and what better day than Black Friday sums up how materialistic we, as Americans, have become. My group wanted to choose something in our current world that was easy to joke around with, without greatly offending others. We chose to have our story revolve around Black Friday because of the upcoming holiday season and because of how absurd people can act when trying to get the “best” deals. At the beginning of the process, we divided the tasks

Holidays have always been known to affect our consumer culture for many years, but how it all began eludes many people and very few studies have been completed on it. Even though some say that the subject is too broad to precisely identify how holidays, especially Christmas, directly affect our market, I have found that people’s values, expectations and rituals related to holidays can cause an excessive amount of spending among our society. Most people are unaware that over the centuries holidays have become such a profitable time of year for industries that they now starting to promote gift ideas on an average of a month and a half ahead of actual holiday dates to meet consumer demands.

Thanksgiving day marks the beginning of the holiday shopping season. Americans are more inclined to take out their credit cards – ‘tis the season to be jolly and shop. One would think that consumers holiday shopping greatly affects gross domestic product (GDP). After all, personal consumption expenditure is roughly 70% of U.S. GDP. GDP growth in the last quarters however, have not consistently exceeded the other three quarters of the year looking at data after the 2007-2009 Great Recession. Nevertheless, retail sales - a leading indicator – provide clues on the economy’s overall consumption activity.