Gotta get down on Friday

Kohl's finds a surefire way to alienate customers: Use Rebecca Black to promoteBlack Friday

Add Kohl's Department Store to the list of retailers opening at midnight on Thanksgiving. This is the earliest opening in the company's history, and Kohl's is hoping to garner some consumer attention for its sales with Black Friday advertisements.

But usurping Rebecca Black's "Friday" for the occasion — the most irritating, mind-numbing, impossible-to-get-out-of-your-head tune in recent history — may not have been the best choice. Parody or no, the commercial above isn't doing the brand any favors.

Former proponents and potential customers are inundating the department store's Facebook wall with complaints on two fronts:

Kohl's is a greedy and cruel corporation for forcing its employees to interrupt Thanksgiving with their families by preparing for an unreasonably early Black Friday opening.
The marketing department has made a terrible mistake with the Black Friday commercials. The spoof promotes everything unsavory about the busiest shopping day of the year — pushing past the elderly, stealing from other shoppers' carts and other bad manners — plus it makes viewers want to seek out a lobotomy, impale their own eardrums, destroy perfectly good television sets, etc.

Some reactions may be melodramatic, but it's tough to overlook that the attitudes and behaviors portrayed within the commercial — and perhaps even in the early opening — seem at odds with Kohl's holiday marketing campaign, "Love to Give, Happy to Save."

Tell us: Is the reaction to the new Kohl's commercial overblown?

Thanks, Queen Bey

Pop icon Beyoncé donates $100,000 to University of Houston Law School

Beyonce Super Bowl

Photo by Erza Shaw Getty Images

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Pop megastar Beyoncé Knowles-Carter has donated $100,000 to the University of Houston Law Center Criminal Justice Clinic through her BeyGOOD Foundation. The gift will allow the clinic to hire fill-time faculty to head it, benefiting the students who study there.

“I am delighted that the BeyGOOD Foundation has made this very generous gift to the UH Law Center,” said Leonard Baynes, dean of the UH Law Center. “Not only will this funding help establish a full-time criminal justice clinic that provides pro bono legal services in our community, but it will also supercharge our already excellent criminal law and justice programming.”

The clinic is one of nine at UHLC. It helps students learn to navigate the criminal justice system, especially on behalf of clients that are underserved by skilled attorneys. People of color are affected disproportionately by a lack of good, ethical representation.

Beyoncé, the most decorated artist in Grammy history and easily the biggest musical star native to Houston, has a long history of advocating for criminal justice reform. She was a staunch supporter of the police reform following the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, asking law enforcement to “stop killing us” in a web post. In 2020, she penned an open letter to the Kentucky attorney general asking for justice in the death of Breonna Taylor.

Through her BeyGOOD Foundation, established in 2013, Beyoncé has focused mostly on expanding the prospects of Black-owned business and offering education opportunities to students. Forwarding the cause of legal representation in Texas while also helping out marginalized communities compliments her other philanthropic work.

“At UH Law, we envision a legal profession where ‘everyone has the opportunity to prosper,’ as BeyGOOD envisions, and we will achieve this vision by providing access to strong and effective legal representation in criminal proceedings,” Baynes said. “And together, through this gift, the BeyGOOD Foundation and UHLC will shepherd the next generation of criminal justice attorneys in the city of Houston, the state of Texas and the nation.”

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