House of Eratosthenes

So this guy who keeps asking me if I mention him in my blog…he shows up at work every day with a cup from Starbuck’s which, nine to noon, is his bucket o’swill, and from noon to five is his tobacco receptacle. Gee, I wonder how many guys now will think that sentence is directed at them, huh.

A note about my patronage of Starbuck’s. For me, things are a little different…I shun the cardboard. I think it makes the coffee taste different. It’s a trifling matter when the cost and quality of the product mirror your experience at Dunkin’ Donuts, but of course, at Starbuck’s, that is not the case. So…

ME: Hi. I’d like a drip, Venti, dark, for here, IN A MUG, no room, and a copy of that liberal snot-rag over there. (Maybe for sake of clarity I’ll call it “the newspaper.”)

Cashier, WAY too peppy: Sure! Oh…uh, you mean a regular coffee?

ME: Yup.

Cashier: Okay! That’ll be $2.05 (unless it’s Sunday, in which case it’s $3.15).

ME: (Pleasantly as I can manage, at 5 in the morning.) Can I get that in a MUG, please?

Cashier: Huh? (Looks down at their hand which is holding a cardboard cup.) Oh! Right! Um…you said that! Ha!

ME: (All smiles.) No problem!

(Negotiations may ensue about “actually we just broke our last Venti mug” or “actually someone just walked off with our last Venti mug” or some such…)

Cashier: HEY! That is a cool card thingy you got there!

ME: Yup.

So I digress. The point is, I hate cardboard. I hate it. Cardboard is for the drive-through. Cardboard is what you use when portability is an absolute requirement. Coffee in cardboard is like beer in a can. The product within assumes the temperature of the surroundings far, far too quickly, and I find that to be gross. So I don’t use cardboard.

My chaw-chewing colleague, therefore, has reacquainted me to the Starbucks The Way I See It campaign. I and some others call it TWISI. The goal is…

To get people talking, �The Way I See It� is a collection of thoughts, opinions and expressions provided by notable figures that now appear on our widely shared cups.

And there’s some kind of snippet on each cardboard cup — which, of course, at this moment I do NOT have in front of me — that says the company wants “to bring conversation back in the coffee houses.”

But some people don’t like that. They point out that the quotes have a liberal bent.

Moments after picking up a venti vanilla latte from a St. Petersburg Starbucks, Sam Maston removed his cup’s cardboard sleeve to inspect a message printed beneath.

“America’s national debt is now $7.5-trillion, and it’s skyrocketing, even as America’s population ages,” the cup read. “There will never be a better time to start paying off this crippling debt than today.”

The quote, from environmentalist Denis Hayes, didn’t faze the 29-year-old Maston.

“I’m a pretty hardcore Democrat,” said Maston, who wore a black rubber wristband bearing the words I DID NOT VOTE 4 BUSH. “I think they should put that stuff on there.”

Not everyone agrees.

The Seattle coffee chain has raised some eyebrows over its “The Way I See It” campaign, which prints quotes from thinkers, authors, athletes and entertainers on the side of your morning machiatto. The goal, according to the company, is to foster philosophical debate in its 9,000-plus coffeehouses.

The quotes aren’t all that inflammatory, though several mirror Starbucks’ hallmark tall-grande-venti pretentiousness. Take this one from film critic Roger Ebert: “A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it.”

The problem, critics say, is the company’s list of overwhelmingly liberal contributors, including Al Franken, Melissa Etheridge, Quincy Jones, Chuck D. Of the 31 contributors listed on Starbucks’ Web site, only one, National Review editor Jonah Goldberg, offers a conservative viewpoint.
:
Company spokeswoman Valerie Hwang said the goal is not to stir up controversy. She said the company has lined up 60 contributors with “varying points of view, experiences and priorities” in an effort to promote “open, respectful conversation among a wide variety of individuals.”

Each cup also bears a caveat letting customers know that the quote is “the author’s opinion, not necessarily that of Starbucks.”

“The program is such that we’re not requiring our customers to read,” Hwang said, “but rather the quotes are there for our customers to discover and enjoy.”

Several liberal blogs, like this one and this one have identified conservative backlash, right-wingers threatening not to buy Starbucks products anymore, because of TWISI #43:

But one particular quote — #43 — blatantly pushes the homosexual agenda. It�s by Armistead Maupin, who wrote �Tales of the City,� a bestseller-turned-PBS drama advocating the homosexual lifestyle, and it reads: “My only regret about being gay is that I repressed it for so long. I surrendered my youth to the people I feared when I could have been out there loving someone. Don�t make that mistake yourself. Life�s too [expletive] short.”

Well, Ms. Hwang, it looks like the program is a success because TWISI #43 has promoted open, respectful conversation among a wide variety of individuals. Well…open conversation anyway.

And from this we can learn much.

We seem to have a lot of fire from the right, thanks to people who would like to borrow a page from the liberal-activist handbook and use commercial pressure to control the public forum, expurgating from it certain things they do not like. That’s an educational thing to take in, I think, and we owe it to TWISI.

We’ve got a lot of people on the left, who would take the observation about people on the right, above, and from this form the conclusion that controlling the public forum, is a conservative attribute. In other words, by implication, they hold the liberal viewpoint to be unconditionally friendly to ideas of all kinds. This proves that the left is jam-packed with people who either don’t know what is going on, choose not to pay attention, or are just plain nuts. Another valuable and educational lesson we owe to TWISI.

We also know there is an unhinged sentiment floating around out there in liberal-land, reeking of cognitive dissonance, inspiring sort of a “backburn”: scoldings directed at ideological opponents, who would deign to scold. Comments like “just fucking drink your coffee and keep your hate inwards, thankyouverymuch” showcase mankind’s seemingly endless capacity for waging battle against incendiary invective, through the dubious tactic of using that very invective. This is revealing. We owe the lesson, largely, to the hateful leftists…and TWISI.

What is to be said about the folks on the right who would airbrush the homosexual-friendly TWISI #43 from our viewpoint? Feh. From where I sit, it’s purely a freedom-of-speech issue. And I hope I’ve made it plain where I am on that; Starbuck’s is a private concern. These censor-wannabes are after something they can never have.

The question that remains, is how many of them there are. From the links above, in the comments section of some of those blogs, and the quotes in the news story, obviously there are a couple here & there. I see no evidence at all that the quantity of individuals within such a class, rises above any more than that.

But “bendygirl” seems to do a much better job of representing the left, than the “Ban TWISI #43” cabal does of representing the right: “‘I want to enjoy your product without having Earth Day Network propaganda thrust at me.’ Earth Day Network is propoganda…about what…the earth?” Thus ends the point made by bendygirl. It is a point made through sarcasm. It is a point that seeks to carefully avoid actually making a point. It seems TWISI seeks to promote dialog, and bendygirl seeks to bring it to a close.

How many liberals are like bendygirl?

I can only go by experience. And my experience is, with some noteworthy exceptions, practically all of them are. Liberalism appears to be an ideology borne out of a limited attention span, and a drive to form opinions out of sarcasm.

That would be purely an article of faith on my part. Something purely unsupported. If it were not for the free and open discussion promoted by TWISI. Which just goes to show why I’m opposed to the folks on the right-wing who would expose the TWISI content to the rigors of social activism, hoping to cut out the TWISI bits they happen to dislike. Those far-right goo-gooders, are reflecting poorly on themselves, as they openly campaign against the rights and privileges of folks on the left to reflect poorly on themselves.

I hope TWISI continues to grow and to thrive, Snippet #43 and all. Even if every coffee cup that rolls off the press, pops out with a hardcore Earth-day-friendly homosexual-agenda-promoting far-left bumper sticker slogan…stuff that makes #43 look like a picnic…now and evermore. It promotes the discussion, and from the discussion we see how people truly think.

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TWISIThursday, August 17th, 2006

TWISI
Thursday, August 17th, 2006