Here We Go Again

This week, Neiman Marcus unveiled its 2008 Christmas Book (ya know, the catalog with gifts like real buffalo-hide teepees for your backyard!). There have been news stories aplenty about it (like this one from the AP). And apparently this mailer is supposed to make us all outraged, shocked, and appalled. "In this economy???"

Ok, you guys, thing is, the dept. store has the putting out the fanciness bible since 1926. I'm not sure that the late twenties were the bestest of times to be shoving expensive things in peoples' faces, and if they didn't drop the book during a depression we now call "Great," they aren't killing it now.

What's more, this same exact same "how could you?" chatter surfaced a month after 9/11, when, again, N.M. was slammed for thrusting its annual pride and joy into the post-easy-breezy world. Come. On. It's an exercise in branding for a company that lost plenty of money in the last year ($35.6 million in the quarter that ended August 2, per that AP story). Aren't there so many more modern things to talk about in relation to the state of the economy than this mail-order (who does that anymore, anyway—buy things by phone?) catalog that's older than even out-of-touch McCain?