What if they gave a Starbucks and nobody came...

For three glorious hours yesterday, I lived in a dream: every Starbucks in the country was shut down. Apparently, they needed to re-train their "baristas" on the proper use and operation of the push-button abortions they call espresso machines; so the company has admitted, in essence, that their espresso operations have become so abysmal that their people are managing to fuck up pushing buttons more often than they get it right. That doesn't surprise me at all, but I hope that the coffee laity can recognize this for the publicity stunt that it is: Starbucks closing every store for three hours to retrain their 'baristas' is like the Nazis closing every gas chamber for three hours to retrain the Sonderkommando.

I was working the night shift at Tryst yesterday, and I was expecting a bit of added customer volume owing to this event. Unfortunately, the temperature outside dropped about twenty degrees in the hour after I came on and we ended up having the slowest night I've ever seen. Good, as far as I'm concerned, because I'll say this for those Starbucks bastards: they've figured out how to create brand loyalty. If the company hadn't made brainwashing a central tenet of its business model, then I'd love to have their customers come into Tryst: I could steal thirty of them every hour based on drink quality alone, but I don't want a bunch of deluded Starbucks regulars in my shop ordering venti skinny cinnamon stick lattes and "caramel macchiatos," and getting mad when my servers try to tell them how a real macchiato is made.

I get that most people look at coffee as nothing more than a caffeine delivery system, and that's fine - a little disappointing, but fine. The world has worse problems than a widespread misunderstanding of what a real specialty coffee beverage should be. It drives me crazy, though, that a guy who barely speaks English, who can come into work stoned, who does nothing more than push buttons and pour milk for six hours a day, has the same job title that I do, just because his monolithic corporate paymaster says he's a barista. Why does he get to be a barista? Are McDonald's fry cooks allowed to call themselves chefs? My craft deserves a little bit more respect. I've worked hard to get as good as I am at what I do. I should be able to tell other educated people that I'm a barista without having to qualify it, e.g., "I'm a master barista at Tryst," or, "I'm a competition barista." I still say fuck them if they're going to look down on me because of what I do for a living - that's all well and good - but the profession deserves respect. Maybe I'll start calling myself a chef du cafe.

Letter to David Brooks, the New York Times' chief anti-Obamite

Dear Mr. Brooks,

I don't purport to understand your dogged loyalty to a candidate whose time, it's becoming clear, has all but passed, but - in keeping with my personal belief that the absence of dissent is a symptom of a brainwashed electorate - I truly appreciate seeing at least one constant, dissenting voice. I wonder, however, if you've considered the unavoidable political effect of a convincing Obama victory in the general election.

Obama's candidacy is a gamble, to be sure, but politically it promises a rich payout for the country. I was not caught up in the early stages of Obamamania, nor am I enraptured by his charismatic speaking; what is most impressive to me about the candidate is the genuine, unmistakable enthusiasm he generates in his supporters. To be specific, it is the character of this enthusiasm - mobilized and hopeful - that has made me an Obama supporter. It is the first time in my (admittedly short) political memory that I have seen so many different people who each believe that they are an important part of actual history: a movement, they believe, that will take their country beyond its twenty preceding years of partisan malaise. That is the kind of enthusiasm that motivates selfless civic action. From a political standpoint, it is the kind of enthusiasm that delivers a powerful mandate to the politician who manages to generate it. I believe that the character of Obama's campaign will produce one of the most politically empowered first-term presidencies in the country's history; whereas a Clinton victory would have to come after a bruising, bitterly fought general election that would deliver no real mandate, and do nothing in the way of defanging the poisonous hatred that has turned American political life into little more than a well-financed pissing match.

Karl Rove's grand, failed strategy for the Bush administration envisioned a presidency that permanently moved the center of the country's political discourse to the right. That political strategy ultimately failed because of its dissonance with Rove's actual, divide-and-conquer political tactics. By contrast, Obama's main political weapon - his soaring rhetoric of unity which touches both the left and the center alike - is perfectly aligned with the promise of his campaign: shifting the center of our political discourse so permanently to the center-left. If this wins through, the Republicans will be forced - at last - to abandon their fear-mongering charlatanism or be left in the dust forever: nothing more than the voice of the hateful 30% of the electorate who will always believe that they, and their values, are the only ones entitled to own shares in America.

A lot of things have to go right for that to happen. Obama has to win the nomination. He has to hold off a Republican candidate whose biography and strength on national security issues give him the potential ability to tap into the huge bloc of independent voters who have been taken with the Obama campaign during this primary season. Finally, as you have pointed out time and again, he needs to define the change he proposes, then produce and implement policies that will convince all of us that the change is real. Perhaps Obama and supporters are selling themselves the Brooklyn Bridge. Perhaps this election and its ultimate place in the unfolding story of our country's destiny is a craps game, and we've got all of our chips on one number. I believe, however, that this body politic has grown so weary with hedging its bets every four years that it's ready to gamble big: the potential payoff of an Obama presidency is worth the estimable risk it demands we take to achieve it. Personally, I can't wait to throw the dice.

Yours,
Charles Atkinson
Washington, DC