Yes, you are going to think that this week's award of the Flying, Fickle Finger of Fate diminishes the award--devalues it, even. It is not that "journalists" do not deserve the Finger. No "profession" deserves it more. This blog has been basically a five year attack on "journalists", and "news" organizations (including Fox News--part of the mainstream media problem, and not part oft he solution, despite in fact being more balanced than the rest of the mainstream media).
However, the Finger pointed at "journalists" this week because of the ridiculous coverage of Black Friday (the Friday after Thanksgiving, and the cutesy "name" is one of the totally overdone things about the totally overdone, stupid "coverage" of Black Friday). You may regard this as using a cannon to shoot a gnat, sort of like the media over-emphasis of Black Friday itself. But I disagree. Notice that there is no political agenda here (at least not an obvious one). The "coverage" of Black Friday shows today's journalists for who they truly are: the only contenders, with Wall Street "professionals, for the title of "stupidest people on Earth"--maybe "stupidest beings who have ever walked the Earth on town legs.
Black Friday happens every year.
Let me repeat this for intelligence challenged "journalists": Black Friday happens every year. So does Thanksgiving, of course, but it would actually be more justified to remind people of the exact story and meaning of Thanksgiving than it does to overplay shopping every single year. You "journalists" out there: Do you realize just how stupid you are? Does it ever bother you? It should.
Well, wasn't it important this year to see if the economy is going to hold up in the "crucial" Christmas season?
Read that last question. If you think it makes sense, you, too, could be a "journalist". Here is what anecdotal "reporting" of shopping on Black Friday shows us about the economy: absolutely nothing. Here is what actual sales figures on Black Friday tell us about the economy (and those figures are not available in the hyped, anecdotal "news" overkill on Black Friday): almost nothing.
This last sentence requires some explanatioin, especially for you "journalist" types out there. You can give merchandise away and inflate "sales" figures. That means the economy is unhealthy, and not healthy. It is the old economic "joke": "Let's sell our products at a price where we lose money on every product we sell. We will make it up on volume." (The reason I put "joke" in quotes is that General Motors, and the American auto industry--helped by Congress--seem to take that joke seriously, as some estimate that GM loses $3,000 on every car it sells.)
Not only are sales figures often misleading, unless you know the details of what is selling and at what price, but one day's sales are pretty much irrelevant as to the health of the economy. Nope. There is no evidence that Black Friday is "crucial" to the Christmas season economy.
This brings me to another "jounalistic", financial community myth. These people really are the stupidest people who have ever walked the Earth on two legs. These people will talk about the Christmas shopping season from Thanksgiving to Christmas. That is ridiculous. That is a variable period. In other words, the number of days between Thanksgiving and Christmas can vary up to a week. You can't compare one "Christmas shopping season" with another. It is comparing apples and orages. Nope. It is not true that people will compress their whole Christmas shopping into the period after Thanksgiving every year. You have to be as stupid as a "Journalist" to buy that one.
Yes, it is possible that people do not get fully into a Christmas shopping "mood" until after Thanksgiving, despite store attempts to extend the Christmas shopping season to about Halloween. But this is an unknown effect, with little hard data, and less real analysis of the hard data. Plus, it is unnecessary to worry much about this "effect", or to compare shopping from year to year on a different number of days (between Thanksgiving and Christmas).
There is a period that does not change in any year. That is the period from November 1 through December 31. That period is the same number of days every single year (for you "journalists" out there, again, who need this explained). Until you see the data for that entire period, including retailer profit figures and margins, you do not have an accurate picture of how the economy did over the "Christmas shopping season".
None of this stopped "journalists" from "reporting" from malls across America on Black Friday, as it that were "news". There are lines every Black Friday (happens every year, remember). There are the same type of crowds. Yes, it was a "news" item that a person got trampled by a crowd at one Wal-Mart, but even there you suspect that the emphasis on this item comes partly from the media/leftist vendetta against Wal-Mart. Dirty little secret: Every single "journlist" report on Black Friday shopping activity, and there were a lot of them, was absolutely, totally, meaningless. Yes, it was a Big Lie (one of the many in modern "journalism") to suggest otherwise, which is what you do by this kind of extensive reporting on meaningless activity.
Enough. You get the point. As you should know by now, the Flying, Fickle Finger of Fate is my unauthorized reincarnatioin of the old "Laugh In" award, represented by a statuette of a pointing INDEX finger. It represents conspicuous stupidity and/or evil that came to my attention, or the attention of the spinning Finger, in the previous week. The Finger stops spinning every Saturday, although I have stopped trying to record the result until Monday or Tuesday.
Award ceremony (This is a virtual ceremony, totally in the imagination, with no video, or even graphics; this is why I suggest you use an image in your mind, for a visual/mind's eye aid, of Dick Martin presenting the Finger to help you visualize the ceremony):
Imagine Dick Martin thrusting the statuette of the pointing Finger at the camera and saying: "Journalists, this is for you. You deserve it. Of course, it is too much to expect you to understand it."
Return next week (probably Monday or Tuesday), to see where the Finger points. You can set up a pool as to the winner of this coveted/dreaded award.
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