The Way I Don't Want To See It

A friend of mine was enjoying a cup of coffee with his family at Starbucks Wednesday night. In the midst of jovial conversation, he looked down at his cup and saw this:

The Way I See #43

"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 damn short."

"The way I see it," he said to me, "is the message is inappropriate on the side of this cup and I am not spending another dime on Starbucks coffee." Not that he could spend a dime on Starbucks coffee anyway -- it takes 31.5 of them to buy a latte -- but he has a good point.

What drives an intergalactic company like Starbucks, that must know that it serves all sorts of people with all sorts of moral standards, to deliberately offend a substantial segment of its customer base? Did it occur to them that a children could get their hot chocolate in this cup? Or little old ladies their tea?

Or are the caffeinated marketing whizzes in Seattle so out of touch with their market that these questions don't occur to them? I think so. I met with them once and they were unbelievably full of themselves.

The quote, by the way, is from novelist Armistead Maupin, who worked for Jesse Helms before deciding to come out. I read one of his books once, out of curiousity. It had much more significant and universal quotes in it than this one. Starbucks could have honored him without offending anyone by simply selecting a different quote. But what fun would that be?