I find it a bit jarring when I look at the front page of today’s Wall Street Journal and see a headline saying, “Shoppers Flock to Phones” with a subheadline of “Consumers shun Black Friday for the mall in their pockets as retailers ease mobile buying.”  The article is written the presence tense.  How is that possible?  Today is Black Friday and my print edition of the WSJ gets delivered, when it gets delivered, between 5 and 6AM.

We also get the Washington Post, which is delivered by the same person who delivers the WSJ.  On page A14 there is an article titled, “The fading thrill of Black Friday bargains,” with a subheadline of, “With early discounts and the rise of online shopping, fewer consumers are lining up to nab in-store deals.”  Surprisingly for the Post, famous for confusing editorials with news, for the most part the article discusses the recent history of Black Friday only minor diversions into the present.  Furthermore, it based some of the report on the portion of Black Friday that apparently occurs Thanksgiving afternoon.

Checking the Times of London, the Brits don’t seem to make as many distinctions between ecommerce and brick and mortar sales as we do.  They don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, though they do have a Black Friday which starts on Friday not Thursday afternoon.  As far as I can tell all reporting about Black Friday was published no earlier than 5PM on Friday.  That’s one of the reasons I subscribe to the Times—less fake and psychic news.  One of the other reasons is to see what other countries think of what’s going on in the U.S.

What do they think you ask?  “An emperor who is a dotard. A population in the grip of opium addiction. An economy held back by bureaucracy and crumbling infrastructure. A culture fixated on past greatness but in fact hopelessly decadent. This was how westerners in the 18th and 19th centuries regarded China. It is how the Chinese (not to mention most Europeans) now regard the United States.”

Sigh.