Readings, Rated
The Stupidest Tribune Article OF ALL TIME
The world’s stupidest op-ed appeared in today’s Tribune. I do not mean this condemnation as hyperbole. This was literally the dumbest editorial I’ve ever read in that paper.
If we have any readership left after our impromptu hiatus (hi, Mom!), please be advised against reading Tom Mullaney’s paean to the lost greatness of Starbucks. Please don’t read the part where Mullaney tells us the sanitized, ubiquitous megaconglomerate had “enormous cachet and street cred.” Please skip over the part where Mullaney complains that today’s baristas “seem less knowledgeable about the coffees and each blend’s character” and who, unlike their predecessors, don’t find blending Frappuccinos for douchebags to be a “calling.”
Surely Mullaney was kidding when he quoted the following from a fellow Starbucks fan: “It’s a tragedy that the young kids won’t know the difference, and will never know how good it once was.” Surely he isn’t so brainwashed as to think that the subject of incalculable discourse on mass production and lifestyle marketing was in any way ever authentic.
The other headlines from this week’s editorial section: “New Kids on the Block Have Shit Tons of Street Cred,” “The Leaders of the Conservative Party are So Fucking Christian I Can’t Even Stand It.”
I didnt read this editorial, but as a working Starbucks barista I would have to agree that its bullshit. But whats more laughable than the notion that Starbucks was once a shrine to coffee as opposed to being merely competent, is the Tribunes editorial page itself, which used to be respectable but rarely posts anything worth thinking about. Honorable mentions to Clarence Page, Garrison Keillor, Steve Chapman, and Katha Pallitt. And George F. Will whenever they decide to pluck him from The Washington Post Writers Group.
[…] FROM LITERAGO.ORG: The Stupidest Tribune Article of ALL TIME […]