Greedy Corporate Swine at Starbucks Cleverly Market Altruistic Image

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Perhaps you’re not old enough to remember the 1999 “Battle in Seattle,” when mostly peaceful demonstrators dangerous anarchists exercised their First Amendment rights went on a violent rampage in downtown Seattle during a meeting of the World Trade Organization.

What the rioters were allegedly protesting was “globalization,” which at the time was the trendy new left-wing code word for capitalism, in much the same way that Obama now talks about the “middle class,” instead of proletariat. (They update the language, but the ideology never changes.) Anyway, amid the senseless destruction wreaked by the rampaging anarchists, they smashed the windows at a Starbucks.

This was ironic symbolism, considering that Starbucks is a Seattle-based company which supports progressive political causes and has always cleverly marketed itself as concerned with environmentalism and other lefty “issues.” But this signifying jive didn’t fool the Black Bloc radicals, who despise all capitalist greedheads, no matter how much trendy progressive camouflage their marketing departments may deploy.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz made more than $65 million last year peddling his company’s left-wing brand and — displaying his shrewd marketing savvy — endorsed Obama, because nothing says Hope and Change quite like $4-a-cup Arabica. So now, Howard Schultz is hustling bipartisan cooperation on the “fiscal cliff”:

There are moments in our lives when we have an opportunity to ignite tremendous positive change—not just in the lives of the customers and communities we serve every day, but in our country. This was evident in the outpouring of support in the wake of the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary that claimed 26 innocent lives, including one of our partners (employees), Lauren Rousseau.
This spirit of connectedness and humanity is powerful; so powerful that if we unleash it, we can make a difference on a much grander scale. . . .
As many of you know, our elected officials in Washington D.C. have been unable to come together and compromise to solve the tremendously important, time-sensitive issue to fix the national debt. . . .
Rather than be bystanders, we have an opportunity—and I believe a responsibility — to use our company’s scale for good by sending a respectful and optimistic message to our elected officials to come together and reach common ground on this important issue. This week through December 28, partners in our Washington D.C. area stores are writing “Come Together” on customers’ cups.
It’s a small gesture, but the power of small gestures is what Starbucks is about! Imagine the power of our partners and hundreds of thousands of customers each sharing such a simple message, one cup at a time.

Screw you, Howard Schultz. Screw you and your phony “progressivism,” your bogus idealism-for-profit image-mongering, while you cash in on the National Public Radio-listening MSNBC-watching fools who buy your product because they think it’s a way to “make a difference.”

Next time there’s a riot, I hope the Black Bloc trashes all your stores.

(Via Memeorandum.)

 

 


46 comments

  1. Face it: people who are dumb enough and lazy enough to pay $4-7 for a cup of coffee are already primed to believe that some low-wage coffee-slinger writing a slogan in disposable Sharpie ink on their disposal cup not only contributes to solving the fiscal crisis but also to saving the planet – no matter how much the proliferation of Starbucks locations and products increases their “carbon footprints.”

    The Starbucks customer base consists of the very poster children for everything which went wrong in Western culture in the postwar period.

  3. “Come Together?” At least they aren’t writing “Imagine” on the cups. I have always hated that one.

  7. Until they start writing, “I love taxes and hate math,” on the coffee cups, it’s a rather empty gesture.

  8. No H8 necessary smitty. All Starbucks has to do is plow every dollar of profits into paying off the national debt. Should only take an eternity.

    Until they do that, their gesture is as worthless as their product, their employees, and their customers.

  9. Of course, the really stupid thing about this is that American citizens can drop an e-mail to their elected Congresscritters without paying extra. Just go to their Official Federal Goobermint Website™, and hit the “contact” link.

    Easy peasy. Unless one is a pea brained, low information voter, capable of making the journey to buy a cup of trumped up joe, but lazy to visit house.gov or senate.gov

  10. The $65-million-a-year CEO ostentatiously displaying his compassion by requiring $9-an-hour barristas to write “Come Together” on $4 cups of coffee — enough irony to make your head hurt.

  11. It’s the Politics of Gesture: “Let’s feel good about ourselves because we’re Making a Difference!”
    This is the kind of narcissistic do-gooder “progressivism” that makes me want to cheer for black-masked brick-throwing anarchist assholes.

  15. Can anyone tell me whether the stuff Starbucks sells tastes like coffee? I know that’s what they call it, but people call the thing in Washington, D.C. “government” instead of the world’s biggest “legit” mafia, so you can understand my skepticism.

  16. There’s one glaring point that needs mentioning: the similarity between the Schultz statement and every Dem/liberal speech since Sandy Hook. How is the wrenching mass murder of schoolchildren and their teachers in Connecticut in any way connected to “bipartisanship” on the fiscal cliff in D.C. IT ISN’T!

  20. I sold my SBUX for a little profit a couple of years ago. They are basically selling hot milk for $4.00 a cup. With government subsidized milk going for about $2.50 A GALLON in Northern Virginia, why aren’t these greedy capitalists getting pilloried over WINDFALL PROFITS and PRICE GOUGING?

    For the same reason DICK GREGORY will walk on his gun law violation. The same rules don’t apply to them…

  21. No foolin’. I’d cheer for terminal narcissism, save, it’s likely to drag us all down the toilet.

    And gestures I can do as well as any stupid leftie, only they ain’t “down twinkles”.

  22. As you said, shrewd marketing savvy. And the idiots who buy their overpriced lousy coffee will think they are saving the world while Howard Schultz laughs all the way to the bank, avoiding taxes on the way, no doubt

  26. We support a local coffee roaster – it’s really shocking what coffee snobs we are, in this house. Though, if push comes to shove, I want caffeine, and I don’t really care how I get it. I speak as the person who once received a 500 cc drip of pure caffeine intravenously, and went to sleep.

  28. Fourbux coffee is nasty stuff; tastes charred. Yeah, the stores are nice. Who cares when the product tastes like carburator cleaner?
    And now their CEO has demonstrated that he is a useful idiot. It’s a two-bagger!

  29. We had a Starbucks open in our mall a few years back. Typically a tenant gets one ton (12,000 btu/h) of air conditioning for every 360 ft2.

    The Starbucks lease insists on one ton for every 200 ft2. We had to run a 200 amp service to their coffee shop. Nothing ‘Green’ about those guys except what’s in the cash registers.

  35. For about a year after Starbucks opened in the IDS Crystal Court in downtown Minneapolis, the whole indoor atrium was saturated with the smell of burned coffee. It was like being trapped in the coffee machine of a fifth-rate mess hall. 🙁

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