Ed Kilgore has a pointed blog post about Starbucks' disgusting and hypocritical "Come together" campaign, exploiting baristas to spread propaganda about reducing entitlements that counters their own best interests.
Like Whole Foods, Starbucks is headed by a CEO with decidedly paternalistic and borderline fascistic tendencies. It's disturbing to me that two companies that help make my life in Washington more pleasant are led by these ideological egomaniacs.
Washington unfortunately is lacking in a cafe culture, at least in Upper Northwest, that provides convenient alternatives to Starbucks. I do seek out what alternatives there are -- Marvelous Market, Politics & Prose, the little coffee place at Fessenden and Wisconsin, even the Avalon cafe -- whenever possible. I'm loath to suggest moving our Saturday morning kaffee klatch out of Starbucks because it works so well the way it is.
Whole Foods is harder, though their overweening arrogance in carrying only those products that meet some high-faluting standard they set, for letting a computer decide what products disappear from their shelves, and lately, I'm coming to suspect deliberately, leaving "sale" price signs posted while charging the full price at the register -- all these again are making shopping there less and less enjoyable.
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