The social significance of coffee.

Every day, when I come back from lunch with my customary gallon of coffee (as sonja would say), at least one of my co-workers comments on how I'm oppressing third world farmers, supporting corporate greed/gentrification/insert hyperbolic bad thing here. Well, that's fine and dandy, but what has Starbucks and its smaller sized brethen (in this area, Caribou) done to the cultural symbolism of walking around holding a cup of coffee?

I thought about this today when I went to Caribou, randomly, and they were having a free coffee giveaway, but only of one of those really sugary drinks. (It used to irk me endlessly when people would refer to a caramel mocha latte with whipped cream and sprinkles as coffee, but I'm kind of over it. It still made me fucking sick, though. How many calories are in that shit? What incentive do companies have to encourage people to load up their bodies with all of that sugar in addition to caffeine? I guess they can charge more, and they're cheap to make since they're made with dehydrated milk. Ew.) I'm not sure why, but I felt incredibly self-conscious about walking around with a $4 drink, the same way I feel after I go shopping and am walking around with bags with huge brands on them. Maybe it's the Crash "overcaffeinated white people" reference and this post (courtesy of DC blogs) that contributed to my overall feeling that buying a needless drink to make me dizzy with pulsing energy is a bit obstentatious and, well, unncessary. I may snicker at yuppies drinking starbucks, but I'm a yuppie drinking coffee from a quasi-independent coffeeshop down the street, still served with lots of third world oppression (and paper waste) to boot. The difference between those is negligible.

I wonder about this column. How effective are campaigns such as FAIR's, when they generate e-mails to newspapers that said media sources deem "...prompted by a write-in campaign sponsored mostly by Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a liberal, self-described media watchdog organization." ? Especially if later the Post can make the e-mail senders seem less credible (or, maybe attempt to squirm out of responsibility) by saying FAIR "neglected to tell its subscribers that this was clearly marked as a "Washington Sketch" and not a news story"? Is it effective in that the campaign forced the Post to make a comment on it at all, or did the fact that all of the comments were coming from one group with an obvious agenda detract from the force of numbers? Also, I'm not sure if the fact that it was a "washington sketch" made it okay to clearly ridicule what was actually a fairly remarkable protest of elected officials raising legitimate concerns, but I think FAIR's covered that. Also, which side "wing nuts" were the ones terrorizing milbank? Just curious.

I was thinking that when I actually get around to having internet access at home, I can take the time to write well written posts with details/analysis to back up my bold statements, but nah, I doubt I'll get less lazy.