Half Caf Latte For The Liberal Soul

We rifled through Sunday's New York Times Arts Section cover piece about Starbucks thinking that if we looked hard and fast enough we'd find a punchline in there somewhere. When it turned out that no punchline was forthcoming we wrote it off to some kind of East Coast joke that was over our heads. Not even Gawker made any mention of the article so it couldn't have been legit and, well, we've spent thirty two years learning that just because Seattlest doesn't get a joke doesn't mean there's no joke there.

Gawker finally got around to this weekend's paper today, though:

In a front-page piece in Sunday's Arts section titled "The Starbucks (cough) Aesthetic", New York Times writer Susan Dominus swallowed gobs of Frappuccino foam in the process of fellating SBUX to an impressive length and girth of over 2300 words. I'm not here to debate the taste of their government contractor-priced coffee (sucks). But, when the word "aesthetic" (aka "brand" aka "bullshit") is printed about the offerings of a chain of 12,500 cookie-cutter coffee shops without even a cinnamon sprinkle of irony, my off day has become a work day. Who the fuck do they think they're kidding? Oh, that's right. Millions of you lemmings proudly plod around with what CEO Howard Schultz calls the Starbucks "halo." Jesus.

Wow, that's more emotion than Starbucks' tepid liberal crack media offerings could ever hope to inspire on their lonesome!